Life is like sending, changeable.
In the 2018-19 season, Schroeder was still a substitute for weishao. During the off-season in 2021, the Lakers and Schroeder failed to renew their contract. Post transaction changed to less, Schroeder had to leave.
During the off-season in 2022, Schroeder and weishao’s fate were entangled again. Schroeder returned to the Lakers with a base salary of 2.64 million dollars in one year. At the same time, the news came out that the Lakers strongly considered giving Wei Shao a substitute with an annual salary of 47.06 million dollars.
I can only say, make people.
From the Lakers’ exchange for Beverly to Schroeder’s return, the latest two operations of the Lakers are equal to pushing Wei Xiao to a dead end. Wei Shao may have experienced the fourth transaction since 2019. Even if he stays in the team temporarily, his role is likely to be weakened and his play will be cut.
From the perspective of the Lakers, the Lakers’ successive introduction of defenders seems to be insuring the backcourt, but correspondingly, too many Lakers defenders lead to misalignment and obvious vanity, in the era when the championship teams were generally hoarding the front line, there was a huge gap between the Lakers and the Clippers, Warriors, Celtics and other strong teams. How to slim down the backcourt and use resources to strengthen the front line is a difficult problem for the Lakers to follow-up operations.
In this Lakers, Wei Shao is the player with the highest annual salary, but ironically, he is also the core player with the strongest replacability.
It is true that Wei Shao is the three-time king of the game, but the real core of the Lakers holding the ball is James. Judging from the remarks of the Lakers’s recruitment and new coach Ham, the Lakers also intend to focus the weight of the ball on James. To shoot and defend, the Lakers have Beverly. Schroeder is competent to hold the ball point in the second squad. He scored higher than weishao in each round of his block and tear-off attack last season. Schroeder is also good at breaking through weishao. At the same time, his defense, the efficiency of fixed-point shooting is above Wei Xiao.
Because of the weakness of projection and defense, Wei Shao may play a good game influence in the weak team, but he is doomed not to be suitable for the Lakers. People who feel uncomfortable when wearing shoes do not fit well. The Lakers also want to exchange old shoes for new ones. However, according to The Athletic, The Lakers talked about a quartet deal with jazz, Knicks and Hornets, if the deal is done, the Lakers can get Boyang Bogda Norwich and rozil, but because of various problems, the deal collapsed.
At present, the Lakers are still aiming at Clarkson, Bogdanovic and Malik Beasley, and intend to continue playing jazz wool, but unless the team can directly enter the championship camp, otherwise, the Lakers are not willing to take out the only two first-round signatures left. Now, the transaction negotiation is in a dead cycle. Any team that can take over the prestige will ask for two first-round signatures, but in the eyes of the Lakers, except for Owen, other deals are not worth sending them two first-round signatures.
All kinds of signs show that when the training camp starts and the regular season begins, Wei Shao will still play in the purple gold shirt. As for whether he served as a starting or a substitute, this is still an outstanding issue. From the current news, the Lakers have at least been considering a plan to let Wei Shao play a substitute. If Wei Shao starts at the beginning of the season, if the effect is not good, Ham also has enough authority to remove Wei Shao.
However, as for Wei Shao’s replacement, this problem lies more in whether Wei Shao has the will to accept the replacement, but in his ability. In the contract year, Wei Shao did not have enough confidence to refuse the role assigned to him by the team. The problem was that, with the characteristics of Wei Shao, there was not enough projection and defense, he will not help the Lakers too much as a substitute, unless the Lakers come up with a one-star lineup with both attack and defense during the rotation time.
This also involves the Lakers’ current deformed lineup, and the Lakers do not have enough configuration to satisfy the prestige.
At present, there are as many as 7 people competing for 2 positions in the backcourt of the Lakers, and even Troy Brown is counted as the Lakers in the front line position, but there are only 4 people, namely James, Brown, Gabriel, juan Toscano Anderson. With the projection ability of Brown, Gabriel and Anderson, they can only help Wei Shao on the defensive end, and it is difficult to play the role of opening space by projection.
Whether the Lakers top Davis to number five or let Davis match Thomas Bryant with three-point projection ability, the Lakers always lack 3D players with sufficient height and projection ability in the attack line. To achieve the goal of helping Wei Shao open space, the Lakers can only sacrifice three defenders at the same height as the original rockets.
The Lakers now face a dead end. To solve this dead end, there are only two reasonable ways for the Lakers:
First, leave Wei Shao for the time being, and take out one of the first round of signing and changing the Knicks Redish to strengthen the front line. However, the removal of a first-round visa means that the Lakers will want to send away Major General Wei again, and they lack decisive chips.
Second, if you send away weishao, you can either trade with jazz or Pacers, and first raise the projection ability to improve the competitiveness in the short term.
Of course, no matter which route the Lakers take, it means that it is difficult for them to introduce Owen in mid-term trading or next year’s offseason. But then again, in order to achieve the goal of “let Zhan ou get together again”, is it really worth wasting another season for James, who is about to be 38 years old?