Monday Morning Coffee

July 4, 2022

Happy 4th of July! I know I know. You’re all feverishly refreshing your Twitter feeds to see if Woj or Shams is going to announce a Kyrie Irving or Kevin Durant trade. I’ll get to these two later. But first, let’s talk about the Lakers free agent additions: Lonnie Walker, Troy Brown, Juan Toscano Anderson, and Damian Jones. This isn’t who I would have spent my limited free agent dollars on if I were Rob Pelinka, however, there is some reasonable logic to it after last seasons disaster. The team is definitely much younger and more athletic, instead of the old geezers they signed last season. While all these players have some untapped potential, overall the team is still missing perimeter shooting and defense. They probably weren’t going to get that anyway with their limited resources, although I probably would have rolled the dice with someone like Otto Porter Jr or Bruce Brown, that fulfilled more of these needs. Interestingly enough, all the Laker free agents haven’t been signed by anybody, other than Malik Monk. That shows you just how cooked those old guys were. On the other hand though, there are some interesting players showing out on the Lakers summer league roster so far. Most notably, Cole Swider looks like he can shoot it, and Scottie Pippen Jr looks good as well. Then again, since nobody on the Lakers can shoot, if a guy like Swider makes a couple of threes in Vegas, he’s freaking Ray Allen as far as they are concerned. Hard to imagine those two at least not getting a shot to make the Lakers roster out of training camp.

As for the Clippers, they re-signed Nic Batum, but didn’t really need to do anything else. They just have too many guys under contract already, and are so deep, their challenge is finding minutes for everyone. They actually lost Isaiah Hartenstein in free agency, who turned into a very productive player, but probably would not have gotten the playing time or the money with the Clippers. Lawrence Frank is probably one of the few executives around the league who can spend his 4th of July Weekend on a beach or by the pool, while every other executive around the league is calling Sean Marks more times than Adele.

Meanwhile, Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving are dominating the off-season headlines. To be honest, these two deserve to be traded to another country for a player to be named later. For KD, he just signed a four year extension, and now he’s asking to be traded. You created this mess bro and got everything you wanted. Now things get a little rough and you want out? Of course the teams you want to go to are the top teams in the East and West: Miami and Phoenix. This is the definition of a front-runner. I’ve talked ad nauseum about Kyrie, and his foolish behavior for the last three years. However, the fact the Lakers are the only team interested in him tells you how desperate they are. Has anybody checked on Dame? The Blazers cleared $60 million in cap space and burned it all on a roster that would be lucky to make it into the play in tournament. Miles Bridges is going to get a max deal from the state penitentiary. The Wolves acquired Rudy Gobert and the Covid-19 Alpha strain. The Celtics acquired Malcolm Brogdon for a 2022 Finals ticket stub. Then there’s Pat Bev, who told Steph Curry “the next five years are mine” then got traded five times.

To the college ranks, where USC and UCLA made big headlines last week by announcing they are leaving the Pac-12 and going to the Big 10. Well there’s more evidence of people leaving California for Red States. In all seriousness though, this speaks to just how poorly the Pac-12 (now Pac-10) conference has been run the last few years. Larry Scott couldn’t run a hot dog stand at this point, and his TV deal was a complete disaster, with nobody being able to watch the games. They also really needed USC to be good, and ironically, now that they will be, they are leaving the conference. In the short-run, the travel is going to be really hard for USC and UCLA athletics. However, ultimately we are going to get to two really big power conferences, so it will get better. This is all about money. Both these programs have been hurting quite a bit through the pandemic, and their new television deals with the Big 10 will help alleviate that with the $100 million in annual revenue they will be receiving. The structure of collegiate athletics is going to look very different in the next few years though, so get used to it and embrace it.

In baseball, there has been a lot of complaining about the Dodgers the last few weeks. For all the complaining though, they have the best record in the National League halfway through the season. Oh and in case you forgot, they lost their ace, their 2nd best pitcher for a long stretch, one of the best players in baseball, one of their best relievers, and 1/3rd of their lineup has been hitting like little leaguers. Imagine how good this team could be if they could just solve a few of those problems. The Dodgers took 3 of 4 over the weekends from the Padres, and when San Diego finally won one game, they literally threw a parade in downtown San Diego. If it weren’t for Craig Kimbrel pitching like completely garbage again, it would have been a sweep. Clayton Kershaw was brilliant yesterday. I would love to see him pitch in LA for the all-star game, but if there’s one guy who actually deserves to start its Tony Gonsolin, who has looked like Nolan Ryan at this point. Hopefully we don’t have to hear any more about Freddie Freeman though and him crying over leaving the Braves. This is the big leagues buddy. At the end of the day, you are accountable for your own decisions, and nobody made a decision for you. Get over it and stop acting like you are playing baseball in Oakland or some crummy market.

On the other hand is the Angels. Boy were we all wrong about this team. At the halfway point of the season, it’s over. They are 15.5 games out of 1st place, and 7 games out of the Wild Card with 5 teams to jump over. Sunday, they struck out more times than I did during junior high dances. At least Shohei Ohtani is a phenomenon and a pleasure to watch. It’s like somebody spiked his sake over the past few weeks. However, this team has major holes in their pitching, at shortstop, and catcher, as well as overall depth issues. Funny, these are the exact same holes the team had when the off-season started last year. This is what happens when you have a poor farm system to begin with, that feeds into a system that has poor player development. Even the two best players in baseball cannot overcome this. It’s a tremendous organizational failure that I don’t see how they solve with Arte Moreno owning the team. Even if they trade Trout and Ohtani, they would never get back the return they are worth, and they would only be feeding those players into a crummy system that sets them up for failure.

Finally, the LA Kings are making a big splash. The acquired scoring left winger Kevin Fiala from the Minnesota Wild last week, and then signed him to a long term contract. The Kings badly needed more offense, and a left winger, and Fiala addresses that. They may also not be done either, as there are rumors of them trading for a defenseman who can help their power play as well. The Kings are very methodically building another Stanley Cup contender, however, the Stanley Cup is probably going to look like a crushed can of Coors Light after an Alabama tailgate, with the way it’s being treated by the Avalanche players.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *