How to get from hopelessly lost to home in four steps
LeBron and Co. seem to be going nowhere, but there’s a clear path to return to relevance.
A favorite thing for families to do each summer is take a road trip. Let’s load up the car, pack the kids, cue up the “Encanto” soundtrack and pray for no tantrums, then head toward our destination with some scheduled stops along the way.
That’s where the Lakers are — eventually they’ll get to the 2022-23 season, but not before they ride a roller coaster or two.
Here’s what the route will look like for a franchise in search of a record-breaking 18th NBA championship, highlighting the key steps on the itinerary.
Step 1: Hire a coach
Before the Lakers do anything else, they need to figure out who will be in the big chair on the bench.
The decision will dictate not only the strategy the team will employ and the types of players needed to implement it, but it also will speak to the overall strategy of the front office.
Will the famously (or infamously) collaborative portions of management cede control and hire a coach who will assemble his own staff? Will the organization pay top dollar and offer a lengthy contract to hire a top candidate?
Will it be a coach tied directly to LeBron James or Anthony Davis?
Will the hire be creative? Or predictable?
It’s a tone-setting decision for what will come next and will either codify the direction the Lakers are going in or muddy it.
Step 2: Make a Westbrook decision
This is a thorny one. Trading Russell Westbrook as he heads into the final year of his contract — presuming he’s not so over the Lakers that he’d turn down his $47-million player option — is complicated.
Dealing him for multiple rotation players — something the team desperately needs — probably means taking back some salary or players with injury concerns — or, most likely, both. It’ll also probably mean parting with yet another first-round pick, and maybe two, essentially selling off the last of their most expendable assets instead of keeping a player with one more year on his deal.
Westbrook, for his part, hasn’t seemed too enthused with the Lakers.
Last week he caused a stir among fans by scrubbing his Instagram of all Lakers images (except his avatar), leaving a single post for people to dissect. It was a quote from his friend, the late rapper Nipsey Hussle, about expectations people place on others.
Dealing with all this before the team has a coach seems like a bad idea, though whoever coaches the team will want to know the plan for Westbrook — a massive part of determining what this team will look like.
Step 3: Put the faith in the scouts
Making an impact in the draft when you have no picks seems like a longshot. Yet operating out of the first round hasn’t slowed the team’s scouting department from finding rotation players from the margins.
Turning unheralded prospects into productive players has been overshadowed by the team’s star hunting, but with salary cap space so scarce, it’s a critical piece of the future. Buoyed by Austin Reaves’ success last season, expect the Lakers to be competitive for the top undrafted players — and that’s if the team doesn’t try to buy its way into the second round to select a player.
Step 4: Fill out the roster
The Lakers have James. They have Davis. They have Talen Horton-Tucker.
Kendrick Nunn has said he’ll pick up his player option. The Lakers have club options on Reaves (expect them to pick it up), Stanley Johnson and Wenyen Gabriel. Add Westbrook and there are still seven spots to be filled, and the most they can offer a player is the mid-level exception (about $4 million to $8 million per year).
If the Lakers offer that to bring back guard Malik Monk and he accepts, they will be bargain shopping as they try to fill the lineup with two-way players who complement the roster.
A look at the players who could be there at that price range is pretty ugly, meaning the Lakers will need to be lucky or persuasive, maybe both. They’ll need to find multiple rotation players and, gulp, maybe even a starter without being able to spend real money.
It’s going to be tough.
Wild card: The LeBron X-factor
Lurking underneath all of this is James and the prospect of a contract extension.
If the Lakers sign him to one, it links them to maybe the most “win now” player in NBA history, a superstar nearing 40 with a track record of being the centerpiece of a winner.
If the Lakers don’t agree to an extension with James, they have only one more guaranteed season with him, a situation that could be incredibly uncomfortable.
Without James’ commitment, can the Lakers credibly sacrifice future assets for short-term solutions if he is set to walk away? And if the Lakers aren’t aggressive enough for his liking, he could end his L.A. run and leave the team with just the 2020 title, and not much else, to show for it.
Whatever the Lakers do, the road ends at the start of next season. Only a fool would expect that it would be perfectly smooth.