Lakers GM talks strategy, LeBron
EL SEGUNDO, Calif. — Los Angeles Lakers general manager Rob Pelinka said his organization isn’t trying to beat the Golden State Warriors at their own game.
Instead, Pelinka explained, the Lakers are building a team around LeBron James to do something different.
Pelinka spoke publicly Wednesday for the first time since the team’s remarkable offseason overhaul began, and the irrepressibly optimistic former agent radiated excitement about the future for a franchise that hasn’t made the playoffs in five seasons.
“To get the commitment from LeBron James to come to the Lakers for four years was really the culmination of everything we’ve been working towards,” Pelinka said. “When LeBron chose to come here, it was the ultimate validation for the moves we’ve made and what we’ve been building since we started.”
The longest postseason drought in franchise history could be finished after James chose the Lakers in free agency. The club also added veterans JaVale McGee, Rajon Rondo and Lance Stephenson alongside its young core while parting ways with Brook Lopez and Julius Randle, among others.
Pelinka and top executive Magic Johnson hope the result is a sturdy, defense-minded team with enough up-tempo offense to trouble the Warriors, the Houston Rockets and every other contender for the title.
“I think to try to play the Warriors at their own game is a trap,” Pelinka said. “No one is going to beat them at their own game, so that is why we wanted to add these elements of defense and toughness and depth and try to look at areas where we will have an advantage.”
Pelinka said the Lakers focused their recruitment efforts on versatile, playoff-tested talents who can score and defend, instead of looking for elite players with only one specialty. He hopes the result will be a flexible, dangerous team under coach Luke Walton — and a different look around James, whose Cleveland Cavaliers teams often looked like a collection of perimeter shooters whose deficiencies were exposed by Golden State and others.
Pelinka praised Rondo as a gritty guard whose championship pedigree will fill a void on the roster. He also described Stephenson as providing “an extreme toughness and an edge,” comparing his skills to Dennis Rodman’s contributions to Michael Jordan’s Chicago Bulls, or Metta World Peace’s work with Kobe Bryant’s late-career Lakers.
Pelinka’s desire for flexibility extended to the payroll as well. After years of trading away draft picks and acquiring high-priced veterans in an effort to win with Bryant, the Lakers were overextended until Pelinka and Johnson spent the past 16 months creating enough salary cap space to sign two elite free agents. They only got one, although the Lakers still appear to be in contention for disgruntled San Antonio star Kawhi Leonard, who has a year left on his contract with the Spurs.
No matter what happens, Pelinka said the Lakers’ series of one-year contracts around James will put them in position to have ample cap space again next summer, when several stars could be available to join him.