If the Lakers preferred Thompson to Harrell...
rrrrrrrrrriiiiight...
Mock the thought, but if you take the rumor that the Lakers are interested in Tristan as true, it's not a crazy leap to look at a roster with AD, Gasol, and Harrell and wonder why the heck a hard-capped team with $1.5 million in room would possibly be interested in another center that makes $9.2 million. It's not a big leap to presuming they must not like one of their centers. It's not AD, Gasol makes the minimum, and that leaves Harrell, who conveniently makes the identical amount as Thompson.
They made a few calls in the off season but then signed Harrell and Gasol without making Thompson an offer. They made their choice.
That doesn’t remotely disprove that the Lakers may be interested in Thompson today, and might even prefer him to Harrell today. Also, I find it really interesting that you seem to know all the inner workings of who offered what to Thompson, and also how Thompson made his decision on where to go. Do you have some connection to someone, or do you merely assume that if something wasn’t reported it must not have happened?
They could prefer Thompson to Harrell today, but why would they? They are pretty similar to the players they were last year and they chose Harrell then because quite simply Harrell is better than Thompson. I'm pretty confident every team would prefer Harrell to Thompson on similar contracts (which they have).
Thompson in his entire career has been a financial mercenary. He is all about the dollar. Every contract decision he has made has been about extracting the most money out of his contracts. He could have stayed in Cleveland and probably had his number retired. He could have gone to the Clippers and potentially won another title. He could have accepted a buy out last year and gone to a contender then as well. But he didn't do any of those things because he likes money and makes his decisions based mostly on money. I certainly have no inside information to this, but that is how it has appeared at every step of the way. And the reporting all backs this up. No other team likely offered him a contract, but even if some other team did, it would have been for less money than Boston, which is why Thompson is a Celtic. He took the money. There is nothing wrong with that, as most people would, especially if the money is significantly different, as it appears to have been in this case, but let's not pretend teams were beating down Thompson's door with big money offers. That just didn't happen.
I'm sorry, what? His contract decisions were:
1) Sign his rookie scale contract at the max 120%, like 100% of all rookies drafted in the top 10.
2) Have a protracted negotiation during restricted free agency, which isn't uncommon for players who's teams don't pull qualifying offers and who don't get max deals. They're likely only able to negotiate with one team, as the others backed away due to the likelihood of a deal getting matched. His took longer than normal, but he was no Donatas Motiejunas.
3) Sign with the Celtics in his first experience in unrestricted free agency.
He literally had one experience in unrestricted free agency, which happened to occur during one of the most condensed offseasons ever, signed with a team that lost in the conference finals for the third time in four seasons and was looking for an inside presence, and he's a mercenary only looking to get paid? You are an interesting Celtics fan...