Leading OFF
GM Pelinka the man behind the Lakers’ renaissance
EL SEGUNDO, Calif. – If you didn’t know Rob Pelinka was one of the most important people in this post-Kobe Bryant Lakers era — the yin to Magic Johnson’s yang in the front office overhauled by owner Jeanie Buss in February — you might mistake him for one of those well-to-do fans who watches from the front row at Staples Center. At least on this day. The team’s 47-year-old general manager, the Rob Lowe look-alike who went to three Final Fours with the Fab Five teams at Michigan and spent 18 years as Bryant’s agent before making this massive career turn, is dressed head to toe in purple and gold as he sits inside the Lakers’ new $80 million training center. The Nike shoes. The hooded sweatshirt. The high-end sweatpants.
It’s casual Friday where approximately 150 Lakers employees work, and Pelinka — watching practice from a second-story loft that features a plateglass window — can see his role on this revamped squad more clearly than ever.
“When I walk through the front door, I always remind myself that, ‘On this day, you’re not more important than anyone else in what we’re trying to accomplish here,’ ” Pelinka told USA TODAY recently.
“I knew (when I took the job) that the way that Magic and I flow together is he loves to cast the vision and then my background is more to be the implementer, to be the chess piece mover. As a lawyer, as a Type-A personality, I love to come up with the strategy and the plan to affect the vision. And so being able to service and support that, and what Jeanie sees, to kind of cast the vision for the franchise, that’s what I love.”
The love was flowing in Bryant’s direction on Dec. 18, when both his No. 8 and No. 24 jerseys were to be retired. Yet this event aside, the Lakers know there’s no more time for nostalgia.
It’s no secret which vision they would love to see fulfilled, of course. Next July, not long after likely missing the playoffs for a fifth consecutive time and just the ninth time since the franchise moved to Los Angeles in 1960, they’ll be hoping LeBron James (and perhaps Paul George) decide to save Laker Land by signing in free agency. Add them to the young core — Lonzo Ball, Kyle Kuzma, Brandon Ingram, Julius Randle, Jordan Clarkson & Co. — and they’re on their way.
All the years of unprecedented struggles, from Bryant’s painful twilight years to the youth movement that began amid a Buss family power struggle, would be forgotten as they could return to prominence. And they’d have Magic in his formal role and Bryant — who signed Pelinka as his agent in 1998 and counts him as one of his closest friends — to thank. Somewhere, even exiled executives Jim Buss and Mitch Kupchak would have to nod with approval at how the Lakers brand had been restored.
Heck, even LaVar Ball might be impressed.
In a way, Pelinka is trying to accomplish what Bryant couldn’t. In the final years of Bryant’s legendary career, when injuries piled up and summers went by without a prominent free agent coming to aid his embattled cause, it became clear the allure of the Lakers logo wasn’t enough.
But as Pelinka learned in August, when he was fined $500,000 for prematurely recruiting George, next summer can wait. Between his time con- necting with the coaching staff and players or prepping for trade season ahead of the Feb. 8 deadline, he has spent recent months pursuing other titans of industry as a way of creating a more inspired culture.
If they’re going to have a renaissance, why not learn a few things from, well, modern-day renaissance men?
“Genius Talks,” as they call them, started with a visit to Elon Musk’s SpaceX lab in nearby Hawthorne in mid-October. The man leading the push to colonize Mars showed them his rockets and his groundbreaking technology, then led a discussion about universal truths of success.
“It was like going to the set of Ironman; just unbelievable,” Pelinka said. “The players were just amazed. It was the coolest thing. One of the guys said (to Musk), ‘Well, we play against other teams, so how do you study your competition, or what’s your way of staying No. 1?’ And he said, ‘My competition is irrelevant to me. If what I’m doing, I do excellently, then it doesn’t matter.’ And so you pick up little things like that.”
Then came Jeffrey Katzenberg, the Hollywood mogul who co-founded Dreamworks and was the head of Disney studios from 1984 to 1994 and who met with the Lakers in November.
“He (told the players), ‘You know, when I was making the movie Raiders of the Lost Ark, I had a mantra in my head, and it was ‘ exceed expectations,’ ” Pelinka said. “He said, ‘I wanted to sit in the back of the theater when the kids were watching, and I wanted them to be jumping out of their seat. I wanted to exceed their expectations.’ ”
Kendrick Lamar, the celebrated rapper who grew up in nearby Compton, might be up next. And while it’s not the same as welcoming future Hall of Famers to town, it will have to do for now.
“Magic and I wanted to identify geniuses in their space,” Pelinka explained. “Our core belief is that more developed men make better basketball players. I think Magic, if you look at how diversified he is with his interests. Kobe, the guy studies everything under the sun. I’m reading a biography right now on Leonardo da Vinci, and he has the ultimate curiosity of all things. If he’s painting a hummingbird, he wants to, like, take its tongue and see what it looks like so he can paint it. So geniuses in life, right, can inspire us on how to be better.
Not to mention the message it might send to prospective free agents.
“Players know if you come here — like happened for Magic, like happened for Kobe — and you succeed as a Laker, the doors that being a star in this city opens around the globe just can’t be matched,” Pelinka acknowledged. “I think it’s an example of that.”