Chance to make some noise, like old days
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 at the NBA Awards Show. “There was a while there where we were a very defensive-minded team, and then we were an offensiveminded 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.
Third time the charm?
As the official start of the NBA’s free agency draws near, the Lakers will have a fresh chance to prove that, finally, they are capable of reclaiming their previous stature in the league.
Nothing will do that more forcefully than a successful recruitment of LeBron James, whose status hangs over the league for the third time in the past eight years. The first time, the Lakers weren’t in the running because they’d just won the past 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 actually be back in the game. Whether James chooses to join them or not, they are universally considered to be on his shortlist. Paul George and Kawhi Leonard, meanwhile, have been said to favor 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 back 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 that pervaded the franchise.
In their place is a realistic understanding that, for the first time since trading for Dwight Howard six years ago, the Lakers are back among the true potential destinations for some of the game’s best players.
“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 now is, will it be enough?
Plenty of pieces, but no star
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 any piece with 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 NBA Rookie of the Year award.
Those players look like surefire franchise cornerstones. The Lakers’ young players look like nice complementary pieces capable of filling in the gaps, rather than carrying the franchise back to its former glory. 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?
“I feel like we have an opportunity to make a lot of noise because of our cap space and everything,” Kuzma said. “Hopefully, it is going to be in our favor and get us to where we want to be.
“We want to win, we all come from winning backgrounds. Of course, we are young and inexperienced and have never been in the playoffs and what not, but I think a lot goes to show that you are a hungry individual trying to chase a common goal.”
The same can be said for those atop the organization — no one more so than Buss. It was her decision, solely, to remove her brother and Kupchak 16 months ago — a stunning move at the time, if only for its timing — that signaled she was ready for things around the franchise she has known so intimately for her entire life to change.