Dow Jones Serious 2016 Correction and the coming Crash !
This story was updated at 12:55a.m. EDT.
U.S. stocks tumbled sharply Friday after Britains vote to quit the European Union delivered the biggest blow to the global financial system since the 2008 financial crisis.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 537 points, or 3 percent, in afternoon trading, sinking to the lows of the session. Other major stock indexes also plunged, including the broader Standard & Poors 500 stock index, which slumped 67 points, or 3 percent. The Nasdaq composite, which includes many tech names, tumbled a hefty 184 points, or 4 percent.
The S&P 500 index and the Dow posted their biggest intraday losses in more than five months and the Nasdaq staged its biggest intraday drop in more than four months before clawing back some ground in late morning trading.All three indexes were headed for their second weekly decline in a row.
"Markets clearly got it wrong and were obviously, to use the British term, "gobsmacked" by the result," said Aaron Clark, portfolio manager at GW&K Investment Management in Boston. "Investors are shooting first and will ask questions later."
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Investors worried about the outlook for the world economy sought refuge in the dollar and other safe-harbor assets such as gold and U.S. Treasury bondswhile dumping riskier shares. The yield on the U.S. 10-year bond hit its lowest since 2012.
Britain"s FTSE 100 stock index was down 3 percent. Asian stocks also tumbled.
Amid the turmoil, sterling hit a 31-year low in its biggest intraday percentage fall on record and Prime Minister David Cameron said he would step down by October.
It"s going to be a scary day,said Brad McMillan, chief investment officer at Commonwealth Financial in Waltham, Massachusetts.
The market was already expected to be volatile as traders adjusted portfolios to account for an annual reconstitution of the widely followed Russell stock indexes.
Were getting close to the end of the month so people are looking to rebalance their accounts anyway,McMillan said.
Banks were among the biggest losers.Citigroup was down 8 percent and Morgan Stanley 9 percent, while Bank of America, JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs slumped by between 5 and 6 percent.U.S. banks have big London operations.
Trading in S&P 500 and Nasdaq futures was halted briefly overnight after they fell more than 5 percent, triggering limit thresholds.
U.S. short-term interest rate futures rose amid speculation the Federal Reserve could cut interest rates to help shield the economy from any global fallout.
In a statement Friday, the Fed sought to calm global financial markets by saying it was ready to provide dollar liquidity following Britains vote to exit the European Union.
Investors have been waiting for the Fed to raise borrowing costs as the economy improves.
Fed Chair Janet Yellen said earlier in the week an exit of Britain from the EU would have significant repercussionson the U.S. economic outlook.
Futures on the VIX volatility index known as Wall Street"s fear gauge surged 33.7 percent to 23.07, above its long-term average of 20.
Oil prices, which are sensitive to changes in the economic outlook, dropped more than 4 percent, the biggest fall since early February. Exxon and Chevron were down about 2.5 percent.
Shares of gold miners surged Friday. Barrick was up 4 percent, and Newmont Mining was up just over 3 percent.
Apple, which got more than a fifth of its revenue from Europe last quarter, was down 2 percent, while Facebook was also down 2 percent.
U.S. stocks had risen in recent sessions as investors bet Britain would remain part of the EU.
As of Thursdays close, the S&P 500 index had risen 3 percent since the start of the year.
British pound fell 6 cents against U.S. dollar on early EU referendum results The pound sterling crashed to a 30 year low following the shock news that the UK had voted to exit the European Union. We hear from two Swiss banks as to where they see GBP/USD settling.
The vote was a massive shock to traders who had only 24 hours previously been pushing the exchange rate to a fresh 2016 best.
Sterling fell off its perch when the results from Sunderland were released - it was shown that the Remain vote was not enjoying the support it needed to secure victory.
The GBP crashed through the night and hit a low of 1.3228.
While it has recaptured some lost ground, the outlook is decidedly negative with technical forecasting being thrown out the window.
This is a currency that will not respect barriers drawn on charts.
So where will GBP/USD go from here?
We have heard from UBS that coming days will see the GBP complex fraught with volatility.
"We expect to see significant volatility in currencies and equities until a greater understanding of the consequences of the UK"s decision is gained," say UBS in a note to clients.
UBS say it is reasonable to expect that sterling will settle in the mid 1.30s level against the US dollar until some clarity emerges.
"Beyond this level, we would note that sterling would be significantly undervalued and markets would probably be reluctant to sell," say UBS.
Analysts at Credit Suisse meanwhile see a deeper decline.
In their first post-brexit research note analysts say:
"The dollar rally is likely to continue, with cable moving into the 120s, while dollar Yen could settle below 100. The only note of caution is the possibility of central bank intervention possibly in a coordinated fashion."
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Previously, GBP/USD Was Hitting Fresh 2016 Highs
As the UK went to the polls, the pound was seen trading above the 1.47 resistance zone - a strong start for the GBP/USD considering the risks that potentially lie ahead.
But, as Holger Sandte at Nordea Bank pointed out, selling the GBP/USD was just highly unnatractive at such levels:
"Being short GBP, to break even in the options market, one needs to see GBPUSD below 1.44 in 1 month."
The British pound had enjoyed strong buying interest over the course of the past week taking those with currency purchase requirements to levels last seen at the end of May.
Nevertheless, we predicted a surge in volatility would hit the markets from 10PM on Thursday night onwards.
Indeed options markets had long been pricing in wild swings on the release of the results with anything between 1.30 and 1.51 being suggested.
Tight Polls, But Remain Clearly Written Into the Odds
On the final day before the UK Referendum, three new polls all put the Remain camp ahead.
YouGov by 41/40, Survation by 45/44 and ORB International by 53/46 (all percentage points in favour of Remain).
The ORB poll appears important as it reverses its pivotal survey of June 9 that flagged a very large 45/55% split in favour of Leave.
The FT poll of polls drifted back to indicating a 45% leave/44% stay split from a 44% tie Tuesday.
Bookmaker odds, arguably the pivotal indicator, confirm a chance of Remain winning in excess of 70%.
U.S. stocks were off the lows, but were still trading sharply lower, Friday after the U.K. declared its intention to end its four-decade relationship with the European Union after a so-called Brexit vote.
Investors are fretting that the unprecedented decision to leave the bloc could destabilize Europes fragile union.
The stunning moves come after global markets rallied a day earlier on a bet that Britons would vote to reject Brexit.
On Friday, the main indexes were all down more than 2%, hitting one-month lows. The S&P 500
SPX, -2.91%
dropped 51 points, or 2.4% to 2,062, with eight of the 10 main sectors trading sharply lower. Financials and technology stocks were leading the losses. Utilities and telecoms sectors were trading higher due to heightened demand for safer, defensive plays.
The Dow
DJIA, -2.77%
plunged 385 points, or 2.1%, to 17,622, with nearly all 30 blue-chip stocks trading lower, led by bank stocks. J.P. Morgan Chase & Co.,
JPM, -5.39%
dropped 4.4% and Goldman Sachs Group Inc,
GS, -6.17%
declined 5.4%.
Meanwhile, the Nasdaq Composite Index
COMP, -3.49%
tumbled 137 points, or 2.8%, to 4,772.
The market was pricing in a different outcome yesterday even when the odds were too close to call and within a margin of error. The unexpected outcome is shaking up markets, said Ben Carlson, money manager at Ritholtz Wealth Management.
The Brexit vote will have wide implication for monetary policy round the globe, according to analysts. On Tuesday, Federal Reserve Chairwoman Janet Yellen, in her congressional testimony, said that a U.K. vote to exit the European Union could have significant economic repercussions. She also noted that such risk would warrant more cautious approach to normalizing interest rates.
The vote will definitely make it very difficult for the [Federal Reserve] to raise rates this year, and in fact the futures are currently giving better chances of a rate cut in the U.S. than a rate increase. Lower for longer is what we continue to expectthe global economy is going to face lower growth prospects and rates are therefore going to be kept lower for longer, said Chris Gaffney, president at EverBank World Markets.
On Friday, the Fed said it was prepared to provide dollar liquidity through its existing swap lines with central banks, as necessary, to address pressures in global funding markets, which could have adverse implications for the U.S. economy.
European stock-market indexes were being punished in the aftermath of the vote, with the Stoxx Europe 600
SXXP, -7.03%
skidding 5.6% at 326.75.
But moves in currencies, in particular, the British pound
USDGBP, +9.3694%
were the most pronounced. Sterling hit a low of $1.3230, a more than 12% plunge from $1.4871 late Thursday in New York. But it has since recovered somewhat, trading most recently at $1.3775.
Read: Soros looks set to make a killing on Brexit result
The victory by the leave vote sets up global markets for the most volatile and frightening trading day since the market sank last August on fears about a slowdown in Chinas stock market.
Read: Panic and bloodbathanalysts react to U.K.s decision to Brexit
In the wake of the shocking Brexit vote, U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron said Friday morning he will resign. Cameron has been campaigning for the remain camp.
In other assets:Gold
GCQ6, +4.65%
surged more than $70, but was most recently up $57.90, or 4.5%, to $1,319.5 and yields on the benchmark 10-year U.S. Treasury
TMUBMUSD10Y, -10.46%
fell to 1.58% as investors flocked to safety.
Leave opens a period of lasting uncertainty, said Torsten Slock, chief international economist at Deutsche Bank, in a research note late Thursday.
We think it will be three years before a new UK-EU deal is settled. Politics will determine the long-term cost. A leap forward for European integration is unlikely, he said.
On the data front: Economic releases in the U.S. have been overshadowed by the Brexit vote. Market reaction to durable-goods orders was muted. Consumer sentiment sank to 93.5 in June, according University of Michigan.
Corporates: Newmont Mining Corp.
NEM, +4.27%
was up 5.4%, following a historic jump in gold prices to the highest level in two years.
But the vast majority of the S&P 500 stocks were tumbling, however. Banking stocks were hit the hardest. Citigroup Inc.
C, -8.11%
was down 7.9%, Morgan Stanley
MS, -9.64%
down 8.8%, Bank of America Corp.
BAC, -6.98%
tumbled 5.8%.
Oil companies were among the biggest losers. Chesapeake Energy Corp.
CHK, -6.68%
was down 5.87%, Transocean Ltd.
RIG, -5.82%
fell 5.4%.
THE SHALLOWS Movie TRAILER # 3 (Shark Attack - 2016)
In July of 1945, during the final weeks of World War II, the USS Indianapolis was struck by a Japanese torpedo. The ship sank, leaving the survivors of the explosionsome 900 mento float, helplessly, in the Pacific. The crew sent SOS signals; help never came. What did come, however, were sharks, specifically oceanic whitetips, and the creatures proceeded to pick off the survivors one by one. The ordeal lasted for four days. Only 317 men would emerge alive from what remains the worst shark attack in history.
News of the horror that had befallen the crew of the Indianapolis contributed to a national anxiety that remains with us, and that has been both channeled and exacerbated by pop culture. Deep Blue Sea, Kon-Tiki, Dinoshark, Soul Surfer, Sharknados 1-3 (with the fourth installment, Sharknado 4: The 4th Awakens, planned for release in late July), and the many, many other films in the Jaws genre all of them summon the fear that sharks are not just predators, but alsomuch more than other powerful animals manage to bemonsters. Call it, if you want (though you probably shouldnt), fin-ema.
The Shallows is another entry in that genrea survival thriller about an epic battle of wits and wills that takes place between an American woman, Nancy Adams (Blake Lively), and a vicious shark. Nancy is a medical student who is reconsidering her lifes purpose after losing her mother to a long battle with cancer; as a kind of tribute, she travels to a deserted beach in Mexicothe same one her mother traveled to when she learned she was pregnant. She plans simply to surf the waters there as her mother had, but instead she encounters a Great Whiteand, it turns out, will keep encountering it. She gets bitten on her thigh; she spends the many hours after the bite occurs battling not just the shark but also hunger and dehydration and gangrene and the suns rays. A little bit Jaws, a little bit Blue Crush, a little bit 127 Hours, and a little bit Shark Week, The Shallows would seem to be a promising fusion of all the things we love to hate and hate to love about saw-toothed cartilaginous fishes.
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It is probably not a good sign that fairly soon into proceedings, serious questions emerge about the sharks motivations. Hunger alone doesnt seem to be driving him (Ill refer to him as a him, as Nancy does throughout the movie, though the audience isnt privy to the biological s*x of this modern-day megalodon). The ordeal begins with Nancy spotting a dead whale off the beach, and paddling toward it in curiosity; since Great Whites in particular have been known to feast on whale carcasses, and in fact likely derive a hefty portion of their total calories from whale blubber, then The Shallows, as far as the shark is concerned, is set in the parking lot of a Hometown Buffet. The shark also has other human victims in addition to Nancy; one of them washes up on the beach deceased but uneatenanother suggestion that the shark is more than simply hungry.
So then (and I belabor this point only because it is also the entire premise of this film): Is the shark territorial? Is the beach Nancy has been surfing his hunting ground? Which would make sense, except that (according to the many gorgeous aerial shots the film provides, of waters so crystalline as to reveal the particular typographies of the shallows floor) the beach in question seems to be home to precisely none of the animals that would normally be hunted by Great Whites. So then: Maybe the shark has somehow realized, on a spiritual level if not an intellectual one, that humans are responsible for the decline of the global shark population, and figures he should do his part to correct the imbalance? Or maybe he saw The Age of Adeline, and is seeking his revenge?
The answer, in the end, seems to be at once more boring and more interesting than any of those: This shark must simply be a s****t. He is like Jaws in Jawsand when it comes to Nancy in particular, for reasons that can be known to the shark alone, this time its personal. And so: The shark circles, malevolently, as orchestral strings swell. He waits, with an impressive amount of patience, for Nancy to be forced back into the water. He does what he can to knock her off her precarious perches: an outcropping of rock, the whale carcass, a buoy. He is, whatever Nancy does, and however long she waits, simply there. He isnt attacking her so much as he is stalking.
The Shallows bills itself as a suspense thriller, and suspenseful it certainly is. Its director, Jaume Collet-Serra, has taken the lessons of Jaws and made them his own: He understands, and employs to great effect, the power of the sharks-eye-view of a human frolicking on the surface of the water, and how the sound of a few taut, orchestral strings can set a collection of human nerves on edge, and the way Great Whites in particularbraun and brain, united by millions of years worth of evolutioncan summon humans deepest fears. Add to all that some lush, masterful cinematography, and a setting that might as well be a default screensaver of a Microsoft-circa-1999 desktop, and you have a film that is, all in all, a visual masterpiece.
The gorgeous visuals, though, are also part of its problem. The Shallows revels, despite its survival-driven storyline, in its various physical beautiesnot just those of its setting, but also those of its star. At the outset, when The Shallows is more Blue Crush and less Soul Surfer, we get several slow, languorous, almost-uncomfortably-close-up shots of Lively stripping down to her (tiny) bikini. And then rubbing sunscreen on her back, slowly and languorously (even though, moments later, shell don a neoprene jacket that will render that effort completely unnecessary). And then zipping that jacket up just enough to tighten her cleavage, but not to cover it. And then, once in the water, straddling her surfboard. Jaume Collet-Serra delights in angles that focus on the surface level of the water; what that amounts to when it comes to Lively, however, are a series of crotch shots.
This is a movie about a lady-surfer; you would expect, given that, a certain amount of lady-surfer-in-her-bathing-suit images. Compounding things, however, is the fact that the images The Shallows serves up arent just remarkably sexualized. Theyre also remarkably violent. Before she takes a beating from the shark, Nancy takes one from the ocean. She wipes out while surfing, and the camera dutifullybut not at all necessarilyprovides several close-up shots of her arms and legs getting pounded against rocks, and of her hair (loose, of course) tossed by currents in whiplash-y slo-mo. Even before the shark appeared, the audience in my screening was audibly gasping at the violence displayed onscreen.
In this, theres an uncomfortable dissonance: The camera has empathy for Nancy at one moment, and at the next suggests its own form of cinematic sadism. It carries messages about female empowerment, until it doesnt. The Shallows takes a saw-toothed villain and uses that as an excuse for a maritime version of Saw; it is, in the end, torture p**n that outsources its violence to the morally unaccountable realm of the natural world.
Hampering things further is the fact that the plot moves along not just through the battle of wills taking place between a human and a fish, but also through a series of improbable twists of bad luckthe result of cosmic accidents and also of people (and sharks, obviously) being mired in self-absorption. There are approximately 13 separate deus-ex-machina moments in the 87-minute movie, which suggest either that Nancy has exceptionally bad luck or that the films writer, Tony Jaswinski, is highly attuned to the zig-zagging nature of fate. Youve got to be kidding me, Nancy mutters as yet another unforeseen and highly improbable obstacle is thrown in her path.
When even the film itself acknowledges its own inconceivability, then there might be a problem. It would be one thing if The Shallows had been based, like Soul Surfer, on a true story, and thus obligated to the whims of history; the various punishments Nancy faces, though, come from a script. That makes their absurdities not merely absurd, but laughably so.
Thats unfortunate for everyone involved, but especially for Lively, who proves her star power in The Shallowsnot to mention an acting range never on display in Gossip Girl or any of her other projects. She is subtle when she needs to be, funny when she can be, all the while evincing a quiet determination that perfectly suits the demands, and the particular challenges, of the story in question. And Nancy herself is an engaging protagonist (her version of Tom Hankss Wilson is a seagull who ends up stranded with her after it too is injured by the sharka bird she ends up naming Steven Seagull). The Shallows should be a star vehicle for Lively; it likely will be.
But that doesnt make it good. The film could have been self-consciously campy in the manner of 1999s Deep Blue Sea, which featured Saffron Burrows fighting bio-engineered sharks-gone-rogue and was a thorough delight. Instead, The Shallows takes itself very, very seriouslyas a thriller; as Cinema; as a tale of survival; as a moody take on the enduring themes of (Wo)man Versus Nature and the Power of the Sea; as a vaguely feminist tribute to the independent and resourceful woman. (The song that plays during the closing credits is Sias Bird Set Free, whose lyrics include the lines Im not gon care if I sing off key/ I find myself in my melodies/ I sing for love, I sing for me/ I shout it out like a bird set free.) The Shallows was originally titled In the Deep, and its revealing that the two names selected for the movie are so profoundly self-contradictory. This is a film that doesnt seem to know what exactly it isor what exactly, given the extensive canon of shark cinema, it should be. All it knows is that sharks are scary and that Blake Lively is pretty; both are true, but as observations meant to drive a movie, they are also pretty shallow.
Broad Green PicturesYou"d think that any movie featuring lesbian cannibalism and lesbian necrophiliaand even a splash of lesbian vampirismwould at least be fun. But Danish director Nicolas Winding Refn"s The Neon Demon is a b****y slog, an attempted shocker that"s too hysterically ridiculous to shock anyone wise in the ways of gore movies. Fun it"s not.
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The story is set in the world of high-fashion modeling, and its banal message is that the fashion industry eats up young models and then spits them out (literally!) when they lose their dewy glow. Elle Fanning gives a sleepwalking performance as Jesse, a 16-year-old waif who has made her way to Los Angeles to get into the business. "I can"t sing, I can"t dance, I can"t write," she says. "But I"m pretty, and I can make money off pretty." A big-time agent (Christina Hendricks) is, like everyone else Jesse encounters, bowled over by her star quality. (This strikes a bogus note: the mild-mannered Fanning is in fact very pretty, but she has none of the imperious deportment of real supermodels.)
Jesse is befriended by an insinuatingly affectionate makeup artist named Ruby (Jena Malone), who has a side job at the local morgue, whereamong other thingsshe applies paint and powder to the resident cadavers. Ruby immediately sizes up Jesse as the industry"s next big star. How does she know this? "She has thatthing," Ruby says. She introduces Jesse to two of her friends, a pair of production-line blondes named Sarah (Abbey Lee) and Gigi (Bella Heathcote). They are established supermodels, and instantly realize that Jesse will soon be elbowing them out of the runway spotlight. Sarah, delivering one of the movie"s many overcooked lines, says, "What"s it feel like to walk into a room, and it"s the middle of winter, and you"re the sun?"
In the movie"s hackneyed conception, the fashion world is a snakepit, and everyone in it is rottenthe designers, the photographers, the models themselves. (Even Jesse, it turns out: "I"m not as helpless as I look," she says.) Keanu Reeves glowers through a couple of scenes as the manager of the shabby Pasadena motel where Jesse lives. (Security is so lax at this place, and the script is so woozy, that at one point a mountain lion slips into her room.) Reeves"s character is the kind of guy who"s not above pimping out 13-year-old girls, and he, too, drinks deep from the movie"s well of silly dialogue. (Discussing Jesse with another man, he says: "That"s some real hard candy.")
Refn is a gifted film technician, and while he is done no favors by his female script collaborators (English playwright Polly Stenham and American newcomer Mary Laws), the movie draws substance from the top efforts of cinematographer Natasha Braier, production designer Elliott Hostetter, and returning composer Cliff Martinez (whose hammering electronic score almost carries the story past some of its narrative embarrassments).
But Refn himself has gone wobbly in the five years since Drive, the existential action movie that marked his international breakthrough. The Neon Demon resembles his last film, the entirely preposterous Only G*d Forgives (which, like this one, was booed at the Cannes Film Festival). Once again we"re given a tour of the director"s shtick: the dead talk, the ritualistic framing, the pointlessly flamboyant brandishing of the color redred walls, red carpets, red-lit corridors, red-bathed faces, and of course quite a bit of the blood these chromatic flourishes are intended to echo. There"s a baroque bloodbath sequence toward the end of the movie, and some business with an extruded eyeball that you don"t see every day. But none of this is likely to give pause to anyone familiar with the work of, say, Dario Argento. There isn"t much new about the girl-on-girl humping scene, either (although there"s a corpse-tonguing moment that has the tang of originality). Refn may have intended the movie to be an over-the-top hootan in-your-face neo-gore flick. But over-the-top is all it is, and that"s not enough.
ColumbiaThe Shallows
A summertime shark movie really only needs two things: a shark, of coursepreferably a huge oneand somebody for the shark to menace. Unlike the 1975 Jaws, which offered a rich weave of plot, characters, and action, The Shallows, director Jaume Collet-Sera"s take on a Black List script by Anthony Jaswinski, relies almost completely on those basics. The movie does its job, if not a lot more, and it does it in a slick, quick 87 minutes. Thank you, Jaume.
Blake Lively is Nancy Adams, a Texas med-school dropout vacationing with a friend at a Mexican coastal resort. When the friend makes solo plans one day, Nancy ventures out alone to a remote beach to do some surfing. Paddling through the water, she comes upon a dead whale with its side ripped open. We think, "Uh oh," but Nancy, most happily, doesn"t.
Blake Lively carries this movie with total ease. She"s in every scene, but we never tire of her amiable presence and her winningly naturalistic acting style. We bear with her as Nancy Skypes via phone with her dad and sister back home in Galveston (her mom"s dead, whatever), and we don"t hold it against her that a few too many surfing shots ensuebecause in the last of these, Collet-Sera pulls off the movie"s niftiest effect. As Nancy streaks down the face of a wave, we detect within it the shadowy presence of a really big shark. It"s a chilling image.
Nancy wipes out on her last wave, seriously gouging her leg. She swims to an outcrop of rock nearby, trailing blood in the water. From this point on, it"s shark time.
Collet-Sera cranks up tension with a beat-the-clock device: the rock on which Nancy has found safety is only exposed at low tide. Now the tide is rising, and soon the rock will be submerged. Again: Uh oh.
The shark attacks in various alarming ways, distracted only occasionally by a trio of ancillary characters who unwisely appear on the scene. Two of these are Mexican surfer boys with a GoPro camera helmet, shooting the last footage of their lives. Then there"s a stumbling drunk who makes the numbskull mistake of wading out into the water. (We soon see him crawling back up the beach, leaving the lower half of his body behind.)
Nancy employs various clever stratagems to dodge her piscine assailant. There"s a convenient flare gun at one point, and a useful herd of stinging jellyfish. The movie ends as we know it mustalthough the exact way in which it does struck me as dubious. But hey, it"s summer. And for those in search of a way to evade the latest blockbuster eruption, The Shallows will probably do.
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They didnt try to be too smart. They didnt try to be too cool. They didnt outthink it, overthink it or give in to the inviting temptation to trade it.
This time, the Lakers didnt get fancy. This time, they simply got it right.
With the second pick in the NBA draft Thursday, the Lakers selected the best player in the NBA draft, officially beginning the post-Kobe Bryant era with a guy who could eventually remind people of Kevin Durant.
His name is Brandon Ingram, hes only 18 years old, he weighs about 100 pounds, but hes 6 feet 9 with arms that stretch forever and a shot that does something very specific the Lakers desperately need.
It goes in.
In his first and only season at Duke, the kid shot 46% on two-pointers, 41% on three-pointers, both figures which would have led all Lakers playmakers last season. Throw in the kind of defensive havoc that a7-foot-3 wingspan can cause and youll understand how even cool hand Luke Walton got excited.
We got the player I wanted in the draft, said Walton at a buzzing Lakers training facility. I dont know if hes the best or not, but we got the player I wanted, for sure.
Oh, hes the best. The majority of scouts who follow these things agreed. The sly smile on General Manager Mitch Kupchaks face agreed. The perception was even shared by the crowd of Lakers season-ticket holders sitting on folding chairs watching a giant TV on the facilitys gym floor, as they cheered loudly before Ingram was even picked.
They were cheering because the Philadelphia 76ers, picking first, went for the glitz selection of Louisiana States Ben Simmons. Many of them then erupted in a standing ovation when the obvious pick of Ingram was next.
We felt wed be very lucky to get Brandon into this organization, said Kupchak.
The celebratory mood was in contrast to the defensiveness that permeated the organization last June when the Lakers shrugged off the natural No. 2 pick of Jahlil Okafor and instead reached for DAngelo Russell. In some ways, theyre still reaching for Russell, trying to connect with him, and this pick of Ingram may lead them to eventually trade him for a stabilizing veteran if they feel a core of Ingram, Jordan Clarkson and Julius Randle is their future.
Were going to stress competition here, and were going to compete, said Walton. And if that means a young guy were developing isnt playing the way he should be, then hes got to come out of the game.
Or out of the organization? Stay tuned. For now, the Lakers are thrilled to add a player who, unlike Russell last year, played bigger as the games became bigger, growing from an early benching to playing 119 out of a possible 120 minutes in three NCAA tournament games, averaging 23 points, six rebounds and three assists.
Were picking a player that played at, some might say, a very established college basketball program, said Kupchak with a grin, the former North Carolina star taking his usual draft-day shot at Duke. And he played big minutes in an excellent league with excellent competition.
The Lakers love Ingrams maturity, which was in evidence from the first answer he gave as a Laker, saying on national TV that he wanted to bring leadership to the team. The young Lakers could certainly use some of that, and while its unlikely an 18-year-old kid can lead anyone right now, its revealing that he aspires to do so.
You need leadership, you need cohesiveness, you need energy, and everything Ive heard about this kid, he brings all those to the table along with his skill set, said Walton.
The biggest hindrance is his weight, which is officially 190 pounds, which unofficially makes him look downright reed-like even though hes reportedly gained nearly 30 pounds in the last year. Hes always been thin, and the target of jokes because of it. When he was growing up in Kinston, a town of about 22,000 in eastern North Carolina, he was so thin he could barely wear his souvenir Duke jersey. Even today, he hears it all the time, including immediately after being drafted when his first interviewer called him Skinny.
I think it just gives me motivation to show these guys that the skinny part doesnt matter, said the quiet Ingram in a conference call with Los Angeles reporters. It got me here today and being skinny didnt mean nothing when I was battling with each and every guy, each and every night.
Besides, he said he has a perfect role model in the tall and slender guy who some think he could one day resemble, noting, Growing up, I was a really, really big fan of Kevin Durant and saw a guy thats grown and grown and still has the ability at his height, [thats] something I have in myself.
This growth must soon be imitated by a Lakers organization flush with money and salary-cap space. The celebration over the addition of Ingram will soon end as the search for free agents begins.
Now that the kids are all in place, its time to pay some grown-ups.
