Will Lakers rejoin NBA’s upper echelon?
Team finally has young talent and abundant cap space to lure James or another big star
SANTA MONICA, Calif. — Over their first 65 years, the Los Angeles Lakers missed the playoffs a grand total of five times. Then they missed the next five in a row.
The embarrassments on the court were coupled with embarrassments off it, with management failing to woo one star after another.
The franchise that once boasted rosters littered with Hall of Famers was relegated to throwing money at secondary free agents in the hopes of claiming some kind of victory, no matter how small.
“I think it’s important as an organization that people understand what you stand for,” Lakers owner and president Jeanie Buss said Monday night at the NBA awards ceremony. “There was a while there where we were a very defensive-minded team, and then we were an offensive-minded team. You really couldn’t grasp what Laker basketball was about.”
For the first time in franchise history, the Lakers weren’t one of the NBA’s glamour franchises, incapable of attracting the kind of star power it was used to employing.
As the official start of NBA free agency draws near, the Lakers will have a fresh chance to prove that, finally, they are capable of reclaiming their previous stature.
Nothing will do that more forcefully than a successful recruitment of LeBron James, whose status hangs over the league for the third time in eight years. The first time, the Lakers weren’t in the running because they’d just won two championships. The second time, they weren’t in the running because they were incapable of making a serious pitch.
The same was true for a litany of free agents over the past few years, from Carmelo Anthony to LaMarcus Aldridge to Kevin Durant to Gordon Hayward. Mixed in was a failed pursuit of Greg Monroe (yes, really) and millstone contracts handed out to Timofey Mozgov and Luol Deng.
Now, though, it seems the Lakers may be back in the game. Whether James chooses them or not, they are universally considered to be on his shortlist. Paul George and Kawhi Leonard, meanwhile, have been said to favour them as preferred destinations via trade.
Since Buss chose to remove the team’s previous leadership in basketball operations in February 2017 — her brother Jim and GM Mitch Kupchak — and replace them with Magic Johnson and Rob Pelinka, the Lakers have seen their fortunes steadily rise. They unloaded Mozgov’s disastrous deal last summer, then managed to not only do the same with Jordan Clarkson’s at this year’s trade deadline, but also get a first-round pick from the Cleveland Cavaliers in the process.
Combine the ability to add two players with max contracts this summer to the team’s burgeoning group of young players — Kyle Kuzma, Lonzo Ball, Brandon Ingram and Josh Hart — and things are looking a lot different in Los Angeles. Gone are the days of delusional optimism.
“I think now we have our feet firmly planted on the ground,” Buss said, “and we’re showing people what we stand for.”
The question is, will it be enough? While the Lakers have undoubtedly made steps in the right direction, there still is plenty of ground to cover. The young group, while talented and intriguing, doesn’t have the star power of Boston’s Jayson Tatum, Utah’s Donovan Mitchell or Philadelphia’s Ben Simmons, the three players who were up for this year’s rookie of the year award Monday night.
Those players all look like surefire franchise cornerstones. The Lakers’ young players look like nice complementary pieces capable of filling in gaps, rather than carrying the franchise. In today’s NBA, when players have more agency to join forces than ever before, will being the possible final piece to help lead a young team to relevance be a compelling enough sales pitch?
Buss has put her faith in Pelinka and Johnson to lift the Lakers back to relevance.
“I told them that I have complete faith in whatever they want to do and I defer to them in terms of basketball,” Buss said. “What I had asked them to do a year ago was to really identify a style of play and that, once you identify the kind of basketball that will define (the) Lakers going forward, that every decision would then reflect that style.”
In truth, only one style has ever suited the Lakers: collecting stars and competing for championships.
During the first 65 years, both were in abundance. Since, the idea of either couldn’t be farther away.
Depending on what happens over the next few weeks, they may finally be in position to return to those days once again.
I think now we have our feet firmly planted on the ground, and we’re showing people what we stand for.”
Jeanie Buss, Lakers owner