Danilo "Rooster" Gallinari says peace out, bitches.
You would be hard pressed to find a player more hated on the Los Angeles Lakers last season than 25 year old Danilo "Rooster" Gallinari. The original centerpiece of the Kobe Bryant trade, his $10 million+ contract brought exactly one single skill - 39.3% shooting from 3 point range. All the rest was a trainwreck of inefficiency and poor play, as the team's #2 leading scorer with 15.6 points shot a dreadful 37.2% from the floor and not even his 5.1 rebounds and 1.6 TOFC per game could assuage mediocre defensive play (64% drive stop rate, though the 0.9 PA/SF was better than expected). In short, the rooster the Purple and Gold thought they were getting turned out to be an egg-laying hen who chucked shot after shot after shot.
The Rooster also drew criticism from the front office, who repeatedly chided him for his constant grooming of his burgeoning modeling career, taking advantage of Los Angeles's fashion plate status as an opportunity to further his runway (or runaway, as the GM allegedly snidely remarked to a friend) ambitions. The team felt Gallinari wasn't serious at all about playing basketball, and privately vowed that they would get rid of him as soon as the first offer they liked came along.
Two times this offseason the Toronto Raptors came calling, each time with an obvious eye towards the Lakers' #7 pick more than Gallinari. GM Jestor flatly refused to even entertain the offers. Finally the Raptors made a third offer, this time dropping their demands for a pick, and this time Los Angeles accepted, booting out two young disappointments for a veteran power forward and two very young prospects.
Timofey Mozgov's Lakers' tenure was painful as his hair
28 year old Timofey Mozgov also went in the deal, thus making two pieces of the Kobe trade preparing to change teams together again. If the Rooster's time in Los Angeles was a hot mess, Mozgov's was just messy. Although he occasionally showed flashes of ability (6 double-doubles, a handful of 20+ point games), the Russian big man clearly demonstrated he's best used as a bench player, accumulating just 8.8 points and 6.1 rebounds - though he did shoot 49% from the floor with the Lakers. 0.8 PA/SF looked quite strong, but as one Lakers staffer admitted, "The guy just doesn't have the talent to make it as a legitimate starter, so he was an easy one to let go. We thought maybe we might keep him around as a cheap reserve later on down the line, but he was needed to get this deal done, so we took it."
Poor David West goes from bad to worse
Chief among the jewels in the return is 33 year old David West, a 6'9, 240 lbs PF who found himself exiled from the eventual champion Indiana Pacers at the deadline for Amir Johnson and Rudy Gay. Between the two ballclubs, he averaged 13.7 points, 6.5 rebounds and a block, shooting 52.5% from the floor with a Raptors high +7.3 ON. He also forced 2 turnovers on the defensive end and posted a 0.8 PA/SF, to say nothing of a 75.5% drive stop rate. Initially another Eastern team inquired about acquiring West to make it a 3 way, but they had little interest in meeting the Lakers' demands, and so West heads, well... West.
His shooting accuracy and defense will be a very welcome sight in purple and gold, which featured two soft starters in Mozgov and Carlos Boozer. According to the team, West is tentatively penciled in as the starter, but whether he stays there depends on what the Lakers do with their first two round picks - selections that look more and more certain to stay with Los Angeles, based on how the board is breaking. Boozer is tentatively slated to move to the center spot in a small lineup that will take better advantage of his excellent defensive rebounding and provide closer positioning to the basket to raise his accuracy.
Of course, it's entirely possible that West only stays in town until Day 60 or the trade deadline, if a contending team comes with an offer the Lakers like. But even if West sticks around and takes the player option, he'll be a valuable veteran cog if the team gets their pick back in the next draft (Top 5 protected), and he overall appears a much better fit and talent in that probable final season than Gallinari ever had any hope of being.
Should West decline his player option, the empty cupboard starts a year early, with presumably only #7 and #15's contracts on the books next season (assuming the Lakers get neither their nor Sacramento's picks back due to failed protection on one, and protection invoked on the other). Even if he accepts it, that's still a large sum of money to play with, particularly since the next player may spell the end of Jordan Farmar coming back to Los Angeles.
Most intriguing player: Marquis Teague
But the Lakers wouldn't have pulled the trigger on this trade if they weren't getting at least some youth back, and one of the prospects they're receiving is 21 year old Marquis Teague. Although his shooting was disastrous in Toronto (34.5% from the floor, 8.9% from 3 point range), he averaged 7.3 assists in 7 starts and a 3.0 A/TO ratio. For the combined teams, he posted 3.9 assists and a 2.6 A/TO ratio. Teague also stopped 75.5% of drives with 0.9 TOFC and 0.9 PA/SF in just 16.2 minutes a game - all numbers that suggest he could well blossom into at least a serviceable backup point guard. While he doesn't project to be as good as the much-loved Jordan Farmar, the Kentucky grad is 6 years younger and will be much cheaper than the bidding war that is likely to erupt over Farmar, particularly since the Lakers have indicated they plan to pick up any of Teague's remaining options available to them.
As one source noted, "Our guys are really split on him. Some think Marquis is just an eh backup with no more upside, and some think he' can be a pretty damn good backup to have. Right now what he is, is a safety valve in case the price for Jordan gets too rich for our blood, and maybe he becomes a young guy we can get a little bit of excitement about. He certainly showed hints of some real intriguing stuff up north, but he needs to get his shooting under control. (Coach) Isiah Thomas can help him with that, we're hoping."
Jeremy Lamb is bemused by the idea of joining the Lakers
The other prospect the Lakers received was Jeremy Lamb, a 22 year old who was traded from Oklahoma City to Brooklyn, and then from Brooklyn to Toronto, also with Teague, in the Isaiah Thomas trade (no relation to the new Lakers' head coach). The reception from the front office was much less one of enthusiasm and more a philosophical shrug of the shoulders for a player who didn't show much in any of the places he went, despite getting 36 starts with Brooklyn. Lamb graded out as a mediocre shooter, with not enough of a 3 point shot to get excited about, and while his defensive metrics were very similar to Teague's, there's no sense of urgency to pick up his options.
That said, were the season to start before the draft, the starting lineup would look like this:
PG Marquis Teague
SG Jeremy Lamb
SF Nick Young
PF David West
CE Carlos Boozer
and that assumes Swaggy P picks up his PO, which doesn't seem likely, given the success of his year.
But West wasn't the only former Pacer import.
From Top Man To A3: The Frank Vogel story
When the season started last year, Frank Vogel flew on top of the world as the head coach of a promising Pacers team. But then he was fired and forced to watch as Larry Brown worked his wonderful magic in carrying Indiana to a championship. As for Vogel? He appeared headed for the unemployment line for another year when Isiah Thomas brought the 39 year old on board as a third assistant. Like the rest of the assistant staff, Vogel is most well-known for his ability to ascertain the potential of young players and coach them up to their best potential - fitting for a front office led by a former academic and adjunct professor.
He also becomes the richest third assistant in the league, earning $600,000 a year for the next 4 seasons - or as much as some 1st assistants. According to Lakers' officials, the plan is to consider grooming the young coach to eventually be Thomas's heir, provided Vogel can develop his coaching skills to the team's liking. The team confirmed that recent retiree Steve Nash applied for the position, but bombed the interview so badly that he was never even considered. Furthermore, one anonymous source said, "We wanted to break from the agony of the awful year we just had. As much as we all love what Steve did for us a few years back, having him still hanging around would just keep the stink in the air. We need to have freshness, newness... something the fans can get hyped about."
