Lakerman0834
Veteran
That center from Texas or bol bol is what we need.
A King and an Empire: The Official GOAT franchise Boss Angeles Lakers 2018-19 season
- Thread starter 2Quik4UHoes
- Start date
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ALonelyDad
Veteran
Aaron Mints part of that agency
GreatestLaker
#FirePelinka
YaThreadTrashB!
Superstar
Don't even know what to think
This would put ball to the bench
But I don't see any other star signing
If he learns how to shoot, no reason he can't get minutes at the 2. Lakers would need him to defend bigger guards
Don't even know what to think
This would put ball to the bench
But I don't see any other star signing
ALonelyDad
Veteran
Ball can play the two since kyrie is a scorer but if they do get kyrie, I am guessing they are going back to Nola and offering everything again and Pelicans would be stupid to say no since Celtics won’t be interested any more
Don't even know what to think
This would put ball to the bench
But I don't see any other star signing
ALonelyDad
Veteran
Can someone please post this article? The quotes I am seeing from twitter
yeah i want killa kyrie don't get me wrong but it might not be the best thing for young zo. can he become a playmaking, catch and shoot two? i dunno that might be asking too much, talented as he is he's still coming to grips with the nuances of being a point guard let alone becoming an off guard
but hey kyrie, kawhi, kd obviously, kemba, jimmy buckets.... i'm pretty much open to any of those guys and think we could make it work with the roster we have
Can someone please post this article? The quotes I am seeing from twitter
We NEED this article
areohbee824
Superstar
Found it on reddit, I think this is the article here:
"It took less than a week for LeBron James to start lowering expectations.
Three games in, the Lakers remained winless after James missed a pair of free throws in the final seconds of an overtime loss to San Antonio. James stood in front of his locker, towel draped over his massive shoulders.
“I know what I got myself into,” James said. “It’s a process.”
Three factors – roster construction, injuries and mistrust — proved fatal. They largely explain why the Lakers won the LeBron sweepstakes in July, but ended up back in the lottery".
The process most people envisioned when James signed with the Lakers involved fewer steps. Add LeBron, stir, return to playoffs. That’s it. But that plan underestimated the hurdles the Lakers would encounter along the way. The dramatic miscalculation of what players would work alongside James; the injuries to every key player, and especially the strained groin James suffered on Christmas at Oracle Arena.
Perhaps most importantly was the mistrust throughout the organization. It existed before the Lakers public pursuit of Anthony Davis, but once that was out in the open and the Lakers stopped winning, the team fell apart. I know what I got myself into. James repeated the sentiment enough times it started to sound like an affirmation to get him through his 16thseason, or at least a well-crafted talking point. Even then, he could not have predicted that the Lakers would miss the playoffs or that his season would end in March. Sure, the first year in the West was always going to be trying. Messy even. That was why he signed a four-year contract, to work through the early growing pains. But the issues ran deeper than anyone saw coming. James may have been able to rationalize the Lakers slow start, but he couldn’t have truly known what he got himself into. More importantly, no one can be sure how the organization will dig itself out. For a wayward organization that was two years removed from Kobe Bryant’s retirement and five years past its last playoff showing, landing the biggest star in the game was an important, exhilarating step back to relevance.
A tweet from Klutch Sports, the agency that represents James, in the early evening of July 1 made it official. James would sign a four-year, $154 million contract with the Lakers.
After years of agonizing rejection from the likes of Carmelo Anthony, LaMarcus Aldridge and Kevin Durant, James seemed to validate the Lakers’ years of careful planning. Since Jeanie Buss had removed her brother, Jim Buss, from power and fired veteran general manager Mitch Kupchak in 2017, her hand-picked team of Earvin “Magic” Johnson and Rob Pelinka had worked to unsnarl the Lakers’ salary-cap obligations and clear the room to sign at least one max-level free agent in the summer of 2018. That had meant trading away D’Angelo Russell, Larry Nance Jr. and Jordan Clarkson while refusing to commit to anything beyond one-year contracts.
Believe it or not, however, getting James to commit may have been the easy part. Once you have the superstar, you must build a team around him.
Within hours of James signing on, notorious LeBron agitator Lance Stephenson agreed to a one-year deal to join him. JaVale McGee was next. The Lakers then renounced the rights to restricted free agent Julius Randle — much to the chagrin of the coaches, who hoped to retain both Randle and Brook Lopez — in order to sign veteran point guard Rajon Rondo. Then Michael Beasley. It was immediately seen as a combustible grouping.
Despite the infamy of the so-called Meme Team, however, the real problem was their skill sets. The year before, the Lakers managed to win 35 games despite ranking 29th of 30 teams in 3-point percentage. James had reached the Finals eight straight years with teams that surrounded him with shooters. The Lakers intentionally did not do this. They had a different vision. Johnson laid it out during a lengthy appearance on ESPN during a Lakers summer league Las Vegas game. He credited the fact he “watched every series” in the Eastern Conference playoffs. “You’re not going to out-Golden State Golden State,” Johnson said during an interview that lasted nearly 20 minutes. “Everybody is talking about, ‘The Lakers don’t have shooting.’ Oh, we’ve got shooting. But we saw all the teams in the playoffs that had shooting, (and) they got beat.”
The Lakers should have anticipated the flaws in that logic. While Walton spent time in the summer canvassing James’ former coaches for intel, the Lakers’ front office didn’t quite make the same effort to understand what it had. Neither Johnson nor Pelinka made the same calls that the Celtics made after trading for Kyrie Irving. Once it landed James’ former point guard, Boston reached out to former front-office members and coaches from Cleveland who knew him.
What could be missed by failing to make those calls? For one, the idea that LeBron would somehow play off the ball was preposterous, even if he signed off on it in the summer.
James and his camp were on board with the strategy. At least in theory. There were only so many players available who would be willing to take one-year deals, and the heralded 2019 free-agent class would be where the Lakers could really make a splash.
So it was with that understanding that the Lakers and LeBron James moved into a new era. Together.
"It took less than a week for LeBron James to start lowering expectations.
Three games in, the Lakers remained winless after James missed a pair of free throws in the final seconds of an overtime loss to San Antonio. James stood in front of his locker, towel draped over his massive shoulders.
“I know what I got myself into,” James said. “It’s a process.”
Three factors – roster construction, injuries and mistrust — proved fatal. They largely explain why the Lakers won the LeBron sweepstakes in July, but ended up back in the lottery".
The process most people envisioned when James signed with the Lakers involved fewer steps. Add LeBron, stir, return to playoffs. That’s it. But that plan underestimated the hurdles the Lakers would encounter along the way. The dramatic miscalculation of what players would work alongside James; the injuries to every key player, and especially the strained groin James suffered on Christmas at Oracle Arena.
Perhaps most importantly was the mistrust throughout the organization. It existed before the Lakers public pursuit of Anthony Davis, but once that was out in the open and the Lakers stopped winning, the team fell apart. I know what I got myself into. James repeated the sentiment enough times it started to sound like an affirmation to get him through his 16thseason, or at least a well-crafted talking point. Even then, he could not have predicted that the Lakers would miss the playoffs or that his season would end in March. Sure, the first year in the West was always going to be trying. Messy even. That was why he signed a four-year contract, to work through the early growing pains. But the issues ran deeper than anyone saw coming. James may have been able to rationalize the Lakers slow start, but he couldn’t have truly known what he got himself into. More importantly, no one can be sure how the organization will dig itself out. For a wayward organization that was two years removed from Kobe Bryant’s retirement and five years past its last playoff showing, landing the biggest star in the game was an important, exhilarating step back to relevance.
A tweet from Klutch Sports, the agency that represents James, in the early evening of July 1 made it official. James would sign a four-year, $154 million contract with the Lakers.
After years of agonizing rejection from the likes of Carmelo Anthony, LaMarcus Aldridge and Kevin Durant, James seemed to validate the Lakers’ years of careful planning. Since Jeanie Buss had removed her brother, Jim Buss, from power and fired veteran general manager Mitch Kupchak in 2017, her hand-picked team of Earvin “Magic” Johnson and Rob Pelinka had worked to unsnarl the Lakers’ salary-cap obligations and clear the room to sign at least one max-level free agent in the summer of 2018. That had meant trading away D’Angelo Russell, Larry Nance Jr. and Jordan Clarkson while refusing to commit to anything beyond one-year contracts.
Believe it or not, however, getting James to commit may have been the easy part. Once you have the superstar, you must build a team around him.
Within hours of James signing on, notorious LeBron agitator Lance Stephenson agreed to a one-year deal to join him. JaVale McGee was next. The Lakers then renounced the rights to restricted free agent Julius Randle — much to the chagrin of the coaches, who hoped to retain both Randle and Brook Lopez — in order to sign veteran point guard Rajon Rondo. Then Michael Beasley. It was immediately seen as a combustible grouping.
Despite the infamy of the so-called Meme Team, however, the real problem was their skill sets. The year before, the Lakers managed to win 35 games despite ranking 29th of 30 teams in 3-point percentage. James had reached the Finals eight straight years with teams that surrounded him with shooters. The Lakers intentionally did not do this. They had a different vision. Johnson laid it out during a lengthy appearance on ESPN during a Lakers summer league Las Vegas game. He credited the fact he “watched every series” in the Eastern Conference playoffs. “You’re not going to out-Golden State Golden State,” Johnson said during an interview that lasted nearly 20 minutes. “Everybody is talking about, ‘The Lakers don’t have shooting.’ Oh, we’ve got shooting. But we saw all the teams in the playoffs that had shooting, (and) they got beat.”
The Lakers should have anticipated the flaws in that logic. While Walton spent time in the summer canvassing James’ former coaches for intel, the Lakers’ front office didn’t quite make the same effort to understand what it had. Neither Johnson nor Pelinka made the same calls that the Celtics made after trading for Kyrie Irving. Once it landed James’ former point guard, Boston reached out to former front-office members and coaches from Cleveland who knew him.
What could be missed by failing to make those calls? For one, the idea that LeBron would somehow play off the ball was preposterous, even if he signed off on it in the summer.
James and his camp were on board with the strategy. At least in theory. There were only so many players available who would be willing to take one-year deals, and the heralded 2019 free-agent class would be where the Lakers could really make a splash.
So it was with that understanding that the Lakers and LeBron James moved into a new era. Together.
areohbee824
Superstar
Brandon Ingram was given a four-game suspension for his role in a brawl with the Houston Rockets in Oct. 2018. (Photo: Jayne Kamin-Oncea / USA TODAY Sports)
The first sign of trouble came on Oct. 20, the second night of the season, when a hard foul by Brandon Ingram on James Harden led to a brawl between Rondo and Chris Paul, with Ingram running in to throw a haymaker. Amid the melee, James intervened to pull Paul away rather than defend his fellow Lakers.
The scene a storyline that would emerge throughout the season: James being closer to someone not in a Lakers jersey than his own teammates. It cropped up two months later when James said it would be “amazing” to team up with Anthony Davis, with whom he shares an agent. And again when he periodically discussed the prospect of the Lakers adding Carmelo Anthony. But James tried to bring his team together. After a 2-5 start led Johnson to berate Walton, James organized a team dinner on the road. In the banquet room of a Portland steakhouse, James attempted to calm the nerves of his new team. Three Lakers starters — Ingram, Lonzo Ball and Kyle Kuzma — were still in their second or third years in the league. Another second-year player, Josh Hart, was playing a key role off the bench. Only one player on the roster, Michael Beasley, had ever played with James before.
“He was just talking about what we could do to get the year back on track,” Ball told The Athletic. “Not to panic, he’s been through this before. Basically telling us it’s early, growing pains and we’ve got to get through it.”
These were things the young Lakers knew, of course. But it was different when James delivered the message.
“Hearing it from the dude at the top, it’s just more comfort,” Ball said. “Don’t panic. Nobody was worried, we just knew we had to turn it around.” And they did. The Lakers won four of their next five games and nine of their next 11 to begin their climb up the Western Conference standings. Elsewhere in the organization, however, things were not stabilizing. The seeds of distrust planted by Johnson’s chiding of the coaching staff was only the beginning of the turmoil.
The lines were drawn. With his closed-door tongue lashing, Johnson essentially planted a time bomb under Walton. Any suggestion now that Walton could have guaranteed his job coaching the Lakers would seem to be revisionist history. Johnson said Walton would keep his job barring “something drastic.” Lakers coaches spent much of the second half of the season looking over their shoulders, wondering after bad losses like ones in Indiana and Phoenix how exactly Johnson would define “drastic.” Walton had reason to be concerned. At one point during the season, the Lakers reached out to former Nets and Bucks coach Jason Kidd to gauge his interest in coaching the team, should the position become available, a source told Frank Isola of The Athletic. A high-ranking Lakers official disputes this claim.
The tension between the Lakers’ front office and coaching staff only appeared to grow over the course of the season. Johnson is seen as an absentee executive, a label best illustrated by one moment last season. At the end of a week the Lakers were criticized for not backing Walton in the wake of LaVar Ball’s allegations that the coach had lost control of the locker room, Johnson turned up in Hawaii, on lockdown in a fallout shelter following the false missile alert.
This season, Pelinka, the general manager, took a proactive role in sitting in on coaches’ meetings and even requested the Lakers change the way their scouting reports were packaged for players, according to multiple sources. While a GM collaborating with a coaching staff on how to present information may not be without precedent, this was seen by those on the ground as another example of Pelinka unnecessarily meddling in low-level affairs. Meanwhile, James had a problem of his own. While he had endorsed the front office’s summer strategy, he objected to a comment Johnson made more than a month after the season started.
Near the end of November, the Lakers were 20 games into the season with an 11-9 record. LeBron, meanwhile, was averaging the fewest minutes of his career (34.8). Knowing he was approaching age 34 and had played more basketball than anyone over the last decade after eight straight Finals, those reduced minutes were designed.
But the way Johnson described this Lakers plan, in an interview with SiriusXM NBA Radio, caught LeBron off guard. Magic said the Lakers wanted to watch LeBron’s minutes and get the ball out of his hands some, because otherwise “now it is Cleveland all over again and we don’t want that.”
“I didn’t like that when I heard it, because, I mean, four straight Finals,” James told The Athletic earlier this season.
LeBron added that he wasn’t sure what Magic meant by his comments, though there was no mistaking them. The Lakers were not going to be set up like the Cavaliers in Cleveland, where LeBron had to do so much. There was no follow-up because, in the grand scheme, it didn’t matter. He was signed for at least three seasons and was going to have the ball in his hands regardless.
By mid-December, the Lakers were on a roll, side-stepping the initial wave of injuries to Rondo and Ingram and, at one point, won six out of seven games. Looking to strengthen their defense and shore up their shooting deficiencies, the Lakers pursued a deal for ex-Laker Trevor Ariza before Phoenix traded him to Washington.
That exercise sent a clear message: The Lakers were looking for upgrades that would help them win this season.
A few days later in Brooklyn, James took it a step further. He was stretching on the floor of the visitor’s locker room when he told an ESPN reporter that it would be “awesome” to one day play with Anthony Davis, the New Orleans star who would lead his Pelicans into Staples Center a few nights later.
For the young players, this was the first time James had publicly indicated he would be open to the Lakers making a blockbuster trade — even if it was indirectly.
History will be left to wonder if the Lakers could have continued their roll.
Speaking to The Athletic just before the start of the regular season, Jeanie Buss invoked a favorite maxim of her former fiancé, ex-Lakers coach Phil Jackson.
“Phil always used to say, ‘By Christmas Day, you kind of know who you are, because … you kind of know where you’re going to fit. We just have to see the team play,’” she said.
By Christmas, the Lakers were 20-14 and in fourth place in the Western Conference — although in the jumbled West, they were as close to 10th place as they were to first. James was a frontrunner to win MVP. But with a misstep in the third quarter of the Lakers’ win over the Warriors, an entire season changed. James was initially listed as day-to-day with a strained groin, but the injury proved more serious.
It was during this time that James became less present around the team. The Lakers struggled without him, naturally, but James was not really around. His injury did not allow him to travel, and he would arrive at home games moments before tip-off. Once with a glass of red wine in hand.
This was when, according to some in the locker room, players started to look at James a bit differently.
The first sign of trouble came on Oct. 20, the second night of the season, when a hard foul by Brandon Ingram on James Harden led to a brawl between Rondo and Chris Paul, with Ingram running in to throw a haymaker. Amid the melee, James intervened to pull Paul away rather than defend his fellow Lakers.
The scene a storyline that would emerge throughout the season: James being closer to someone not in a Lakers jersey than his own teammates. It cropped up two months later when James said it would be “amazing” to team up with Anthony Davis, with whom he shares an agent. And again when he periodically discussed the prospect of the Lakers adding Carmelo Anthony. But James tried to bring his team together. After a 2-5 start led Johnson to berate Walton, James organized a team dinner on the road. In the banquet room of a Portland steakhouse, James attempted to calm the nerves of his new team. Three Lakers starters — Ingram, Lonzo Ball and Kyle Kuzma — were still in their second or third years in the league. Another second-year player, Josh Hart, was playing a key role off the bench. Only one player on the roster, Michael Beasley, had ever played with James before.
“He was just talking about what we could do to get the year back on track,” Ball told The Athletic. “Not to panic, he’s been through this before. Basically telling us it’s early, growing pains and we’ve got to get through it.”
These were things the young Lakers knew, of course. But it was different when James delivered the message.
“Hearing it from the dude at the top, it’s just more comfort,” Ball said. “Don’t panic. Nobody was worried, we just knew we had to turn it around.” And they did. The Lakers won four of their next five games and nine of their next 11 to begin their climb up the Western Conference standings. Elsewhere in the organization, however, things were not stabilizing. The seeds of distrust planted by Johnson’s chiding of the coaching staff was only the beginning of the turmoil.
The lines were drawn. With his closed-door tongue lashing, Johnson essentially planted a time bomb under Walton. Any suggestion now that Walton could have guaranteed his job coaching the Lakers would seem to be revisionist history. Johnson said Walton would keep his job barring “something drastic.” Lakers coaches spent much of the second half of the season looking over their shoulders, wondering after bad losses like ones in Indiana and Phoenix how exactly Johnson would define “drastic.” Walton had reason to be concerned. At one point during the season, the Lakers reached out to former Nets and Bucks coach Jason Kidd to gauge his interest in coaching the team, should the position become available, a source told Frank Isola of The Athletic. A high-ranking Lakers official disputes this claim.
The tension between the Lakers’ front office and coaching staff only appeared to grow over the course of the season. Johnson is seen as an absentee executive, a label best illustrated by one moment last season. At the end of a week the Lakers were criticized for not backing Walton in the wake of LaVar Ball’s allegations that the coach had lost control of the locker room, Johnson turned up in Hawaii, on lockdown in a fallout shelter following the false missile alert.
This season, Pelinka, the general manager, took a proactive role in sitting in on coaches’ meetings and even requested the Lakers change the way their scouting reports were packaged for players, according to multiple sources. While a GM collaborating with a coaching staff on how to present information may not be without precedent, this was seen by those on the ground as another example of Pelinka unnecessarily meddling in low-level affairs. Meanwhile, James had a problem of his own. While he had endorsed the front office’s summer strategy, he objected to a comment Johnson made more than a month after the season started.
Near the end of November, the Lakers were 20 games into the season with an 11-9 record. LeBron, meanwhile, was averaging the fewest minutes of his career (34.8). Knowing he was approaching age 34 and had played more basketball than anyone over the last decade after eight straight Finals, those reduced minutes were designed.
But the way Johnson described this Lakers plan, in an interview with SiriusXM NBA Radio, caught LeBron off guard. Magic said the Lakers wanted to watch LeBron’s minutes and get the ball out of his hands some, because otherwise “now it is Cleveland all over again and we don’t want that.”
“I didn’t like that when I heard it, because, I mean, four straight Finals,” James told The Athletic earlier this season.
LeBron added that he wasn’t sure what Magic meant by his comments, though there was no mistaking them. The Lakers were not going to be set up like the Cavaliers in Cleveland, where LeBron had to do so much. There was no follow-up because, in the grand scheme, it didn’t matter. He was signed for at least three seasons and was going to have the ball in his hands regardless.
By mid-December, the Lakers were on a roll, side-stepping the initial wave of injuries to Rondo and Ingram and, at one point, won six out of seven games. Looking to strengthen their defense and shore up their shooting deficiencies, the Lakers pursued a deal for ex-Laker Trevor Ariza before Phoenix traded him to Washington.
That exercise sent a clear message: The Lakers were looking for upgrades that would help them win this season.
A few days later in Brooklyn, James took it a step further. He was stretching on the floor of the visitor’s locker room when he told an ESPN reporter that it would be “awesome” to one day play with Anthony Davis, the New Orleans star who would lead his Pelicans into Staples Center a few nights later.
For the young players, this was the first time James had publicly indicated he would be open to the Lakers making a blockbuster trade — even if it was indirectly.
History will be left to wonder if the Lakers could have continued their roll.
Speaking to The Athletic just before the start of the regular season, Jeanie Buss invoked a favorite maxim of her former fiancé, ex-Lakers coach Phil Jackson.
“Phil always used to say, ‘By Christmas Day, you kind of know who you are, because … you kind of know where you’re going to fit. We just have to see the team play,’” she said.
By Christmas, the Lakers were 20-14 and in fourth place in the Western Conference — although in the jumbled West, they were as close to 10th place as they were to first. James was a frontrunner to win MVP. But with a misstep in the third quarter of the Lakers’ win over the Warriors, an entire season changed. James was initially listed as day-to-day with a strained groin, but the injury proved more serious.
It was during this time that James became less present around the team. The Lakers struggled without him, naturally, but James was not really around. His injury did not allow him to travel, and he would arrive at home games moments before tip-off. Once with a glass of red wine in hand.
This was when, according to some in the locker room, players started to look at James a bit differently.
areohbee824
Superstar
In contrast to LeBron’s disconnected presence, there was Rajon Rondo. Rondo had also suffered an injury on Christmas, a sprained finger that required surgery. Instead of disappearing, however, Rondo was a regular presence. He shot left-handed in post-practice shooting games and hung around the locker room. When the Lakers’ plane left for Sacramento the day after Christmas, Rondo met the plane at the airstrip.
With cookies.
Rondo’s snacks are their own story in leadership. He started making sandwiches for teammates when he played in Sacramento. Then, his personal chef taught him to make cookies. Lonzo Ball likes to tell Rondo his chocolate chip cookies could be sold in stores.
“Food is the best way to bring people together,” said Rondo, who also frequently catered the postgame meals in the locker room for the team.
James missed 17 games following that injury suffered on Christmas Day, and in that time the Lakers’ season swung.
They won just six times, falling out of the top eight spots in the Western Conference. Lonzo Ball suffered what would become a season-ending ankle sprain in a loss at Houston.
The need for reinforcements was glaring, and on the weekend of Jan. 25, the Lakers had a tentative deal in place to acquire Bulls forward Jabari Parker in exchange for Kentavious Caldwell-Pope and Michael Beasley, league sources told The Athletic. However, Caldwell-Pope — another Rich Paul client — had to approve any trade and had not signed off on the deal. The Bulls awaited Caldwell-Pope’s approval over that weekend, sources said.
The deal remained in limbo until Jan. 28, when Davis requested a trade out of New Orleans. With most around the league viewing that statement, issued by Paul, as an effort to team Davis with James in L.A., the Bulls moved on and realized the Lakers would cease business until the Davis saga unfolded. Chicago eventually traded Parker to Washington for Otto Porter Jr. at the deadline.
James returned just as the Davis talks started getting rolling. With his team barely above .500 at 26-25, James carried the Lakers to a thrilling overtime win over the Clippers on Jan. 31. Two nights later, with James held out due to load management, veterans Michael Beasley and JaVale McGee stood up during the postgame team meeting to challenge Walton over his message that Beasley play more unselfishly. McGee joined in, sources said. The brief flare-up was seen as the first time the locker room pushed back on Walton, and it coincided with the turbulence of trade deadline season and the uncertainty of the roster amid the Davis talks.
The Lakers needed to win games once James returned, but not even his presence could totally stop their slide.
They hit the road for four games in Eastern Conference cities. Staffers boarding the team’s charter to Indianapolis noticed that Kurt Rambis, a former Lakers player, assistant coach and two-time NBA head coach, was on his first road trip of the season. Rambis had been hired earlier in the year as a senior basketball adviser and, with Walton’s situation seen as tenuous, his presence made some wary.
Rambis is married to Linda Rambis, Buss’ close friend and adviser.
The Lakers’ reported trade talks loomed over the team roster. Virtually every member of the young core had been linked to a trade for Davis, as had veterans Rondo and Beasley.
A schism developed in the locker room. Sources around the team said it was apparent that the young players no longer trusted James, believing he was operating behind the scenes to get them traded to New Orleans.
At one point, some in Walton’s circles feared Paul was trying to use the Davis situation to leverage a coaching change, with the premise being that his arrival would require a higher-caliber coach. But the Lakers received backchannel information that Davis liked Walton and that relieved pressure on the third-year head coach.
The overall weight of the situation came to a head on Feb. 5, when the Lakers were blown out 136-94 in Indiana — their most lopsided defeat of the season.
The trade deadline came with the Lakers making only small moves. But they proved to be significant. In an effort to make up for the season-long shooting struggles, they traded rookie Svi Mykhailiuk to Detroit for Reggie Bullock, one of the NBA’s best spot-up shooters from 3, then Ivica Zubac and Beasley (less than a week removed from his locker room outburst) for Mike Muscala, who had landed with the Clippers after a trade from Philadelphia.
Trading Zubac, the Lakers’ starting center at the time, was a curious choice. After falling out of favor early in the season, he had become their most reliable big man. Muscala, a 27-year-old stretch forward, was shooting 39.2 percent from 3 on four attempts per game with the Sixers. In the Lakers’ last home game, Johnson and Pelinka watched Muscala score 17 points, including three 3s, to power the Sixers to a win at Staples Center.
Did that single performance inspire the Lakers to make the move? Some believe so.
Once the trade deadline was over and Davis remained in New Orleans, the trust issues that sprung up as a result of the very public talks remained. Johnson joined the team two days after the Feb. 7 deadline in Philadelphia, but his message, delivered 30 minutes before tipoff, seemed to be poorly received. Sources described players rolling their eyes at Johnson. They had gone days without hearing from the front office and the message from management now was, essentially, that they needed to toughen up. The Lakers lost in Philly that night, and again in Atlanta against the lowly Hawks.
When Kuzma went to Charlotte for All-Star Weekend to participate in the NBA’s Rising Stars Challenge, he sought an audience with Pelinka. Kuzma and his people came away from their chat feeling reassured, a source close to the situation told The Athletic. Pelinka told the second-year forward that he was key to the Lakers’ future and that, unless it was a trade for one of the game’s three best players, he wasn’t trading him.
A year earlier, Larry Nance Jr. approached Pelinka with a similar question.
Nance Jr. and his fiancée, his college girlfriend, were interested in buying a house. He wanted to get a sense of whether the Lakers planned on keeping him around, and Pelinka told him that the Lakers would only trade him if it meant landing one of the game’s three best players. He told him to buy the house, multiple sources confirmed.
Before Nance could get that far, however, he received a call on the morning of Feb. 8, 2018. He and Jordan Clarkson had been traded to Cleveland in a salary dump that cleared cap space for the Lakers to be able to offer two max slots in the summer.
When Buss railed against the media at the Sloan Conference on March 2, blaming the “fake news” relating to the Davis trade situation for hurting the morale among the team’s younger players, it was about more than that one story. Her frustration, according to a Lakers source with knowledge of her thinking, extended to another report that she didn’t mention.
In early February, ESPN’s Stephen A. Smith said on his radio show that Buss had been the driving force behind the decision to draft Ball second overall out of UCLA in 2017. According to Smith, Magic had wanted to draft De’Aaron Fox out of Kentucky but, in essence, succumbed because of the business possibilities that came with pairing the Bruins star with the Lakers brand. While the source adamantly denies the veracity of the report, and Johnson is known to have told Buss that he had nothing to do with this message being spread, these are the types of fires that kept flaring up in the media throughout the course of a chaotic campaign.
Last week, Buss appeared on a live taping of the Sports Business Radio Road Show, and described one story that made her doubt the front office she had put in place.
“There was a story that came out this season — and we’ve had our challenges this season — and it kind of made me doubt for a second some of the people that I was working with,” Buss said.
Following the All-Star break, the Lakers had 25 games to make their final push. They were 28-29 and in 10th place in the West. This was when James infamously declared he would “activate” for the stretch run. It was a statement he backed up with 29 points and 12 rebounds in a decisive win over the Rockets on Feb. 21. But after the turbulence of the season up to that point, the Lakers needed to keep it going.
“If we go on this road trip and drop two straight, then what does this game really mean?” Walton said, before the Lakers went on to lose in New Orleans and Memphis to two sub-.500 teams.
A week later, after LeBron passed the ball off the bottom of the backboard and the Lakers lost in Phoenix to fall to three games under .500, they returned home for perhaps their most critical game of the season. The Clippers were 4½ games ahead of the Lakers in the standings, with 19 games left in the year. Win and the Lakers could conceivably still go on a run and make the playoffs. Lose, and any hope of reaching the playoffs would essentially die.
Pelinka would not be on hand to witness the fate of the team he assembled. He made plans to scout the University of Texas’ game at Texas Tech and ended up watching the Lakers’ playoff dreams end from a local dinner spot in Lubbock, Texas, according to sources familiar with the situation.
The injuries kept piling up at an alarming rate. Ingram missed the Clippers game with a sore shoulder that turned out to be deep vein thrombosis, a blood clot that required surgery and has the potential to be career-altering. Hart was shut down prior to having a procedure done on his right patellar tendon. The knee had bothered him since January. Finally, after he was given the time to pass Michael Jordan on the all-time scoring list, James was shut down on March 30, with six games left on the calendar.
When it is over, the Lakers will have missed nearly 200 total games due to injuries.
With the season drawing to a close, finger pointing has begun within the walls of Lakers headquarters, primarily over the moves Johnson and Pelinka made once James committed. The roster construction has generally been viewed as a failure.
The Lakers are once again next-to-last in 3-point percentage and James’ usage rate (30.9 percent, about as high as it ever was with the Cavs) indicate additional playmakers didn’t help reduce his workload.
Who’s responsible for the experiment was the subject of some debate in Lakers circles recently.
One version of events that circulated within the Lakers’ walls — and does not bode well for Walton’s future — suggested that it was the coach’s desire to play James off the ball more that inspired the team’s emphasis on playmakers.
A source with knowledge of Walton’s thinking vehemently refuted the assertion, indicating that the sequence of events has been unfairly flip-flopped: Walton was given all these players who weren’t strong shooters but could handle the ball, and thus had no other choice but to find a way to play LeBron off the ball more. Other sources said the coaching staff was not consulted about potential targets in free agency, and that Walton was only looped in very late in the process.
However, that Magic Johnson summer league interview would seem to expose the theory as nothing more than revisionist history, after he broke down why Philadelphia struggled last spring while Boston and Houston both made deep runs.
“I built this team based on what happened in the playoffs,” Johnson said. “You don’t build the team just for the regular season. You’ve got to build it for the playoffs as well. … then Houston had tough guys. Boston had tough guys. So, what did I bring in? Tough guys. So that’s how I’m building it.”
However poorly those comments may reflect on Johnson nine months later and with a full season of evidence, a source with knowledge of Buss’ thinking said she still has complete faith in both Johnson and Pelinka.
The Lakers will now turn their attention to an offseason in which they are expected to revisit trade options for Davis, while also chasing top targets in free agency – as unlikely as it is that Kawhi Leonard, Kevin Durant or Klay Thompson will come, according to a league source who believes the Lakers will be second or third on those players’ lists. The fear that the Lakers could strike out with their top targets has already led to some message massaging.
“You don’t need names, you need games,” a source close to James told The Athletic. The Lakers could build a team of complementary pieces better suited for James, like Boston’s Marcus Morris or Milwaukee’s Nikola Mirotic, and fare better than they did this season. But it would run counter to Johnson’s stated philosophy. After all, on a World Series broadcast last fall, Johnson declared, “I’m going to get another superstar next summer!”
If that’s the only barometer of success, then, what will free agents make of the year that just was?
Growing pains were expected and a slow start wasn’t surprising. However, the season went so far off the rails, it’s impossible to know what the Lakers might have been if they were even reasonably healthy. Their 20-14 record on Christmas had the Lakers on pace for 48 wins. With one game left in the season, the Clippers, Thunder and Spurs are all fighting for final positioning with 47 wins.
After the All-Star break, the odds of the Lakers making the playoffs were even worse than they knew at the time. It would have taken a 20-5 streak to reach 48 wins.
Ultimately, the fate of the season will fall back on the injuries. Who can know what might have been? LeBron played 55 games, Ingram 52, Ball 47 and Rondo 46.
“It’s made it challenging,” Walton said. “Ideally they’d have had a lot more time together. But I do think a year is a year, either way. It’s not the ideal way of getting that experience, but they as a group now, we’ve gone through it. So, going into next season we should at least know what to expect.”
As LeBron learned this season, you never truly know.
— Shams Charania, Joe Vardon, Sam Amick and Frank Isola contributed to the reporting for this story.
With cookies.
Rondo’s snacks are their own story in leadership. He started making sandwiches for teammates when he played in Sacramento. Then, his personal chef taught him to make cookies. Lonzo Ball likes to tell Rondo his chocolate chip cookies could be sold in stores.
“Food is the best way to bring people together,” said Rondo, who also frequently catered the postgame meals in the locker room for the team.
James missed 17 games following that injury suffered on Christmas Day, and in that time the Lakers’ season swung.
They won just six times, falling out of the top eight spots in the Western Conference. Lonzo Ball suffered what would become a season-ending ankle sprain in a loss at Houston.
The need for reinforcements was glaring, and on the weekend of Jan. 25, the Lakers had a tentative deal in place to acquire Bulls forward Jabari Parker in exchange for Kentavious Caldwell-Pope and Michael Beasley, league sources told The Athletic. However, Caldwell-Pope — another Rich Paul client — had to approve any trade and had not signed off on the deal. The Bulls awaited Caldwell-Pope’s approval over that weekend, sources said.
The deal remained in limbo until Jan. 28, when Davis requested a trade out of New Orleans. With most around the league viewing that statement, issued by Paul, as an effort to team Davis with James in L.A., the Bulls moved on and realized the Lakers would cease business until the Davis saga unfolded. Chicago eventually traded Parker to Washington for Otto Porter Jr. at the deadline.
James returned just as the Davis talks started getting rolling. With his team barely above .500 at 26-25, James carried the Lakers to a thrilling overtime win over the Clippers on Jan. 31. Two nights later, with James held out due to load management, veterans Michael Beasley and JaVale McGee stood up during the postgame team meeting to challenge Walton over his message that Beasley play more unselfishly. McGee joined in, sources said. The brief flare-up was seen as the first time the locker room pushed back on Walton, and it coincided with the turbulence of trade deadline season and the uncertainty of the roster amid the Davis talks.
The Lakers needed to win games once James returned, but not even his presence could totally stop their slide.
They hit the road for four games in Eastern Conference cities. Staffers boarding the team’s charter to Indianapolis noticed that Kurt Rambis, a former Lakers player, assistant coach and two-time NBA head coach, was on his first road trip of the season. Rambis had been hired earlier in the year as a senior basketball adviser and, with Walton’s situation seen as tenuous, his presence made some wary.
Rambis is married to Linda Rambis, Buss’ close friend and adviser.
The Lakers’ reported trade talks loomed over the team roster. Virtually every member of the young core had been linked to a trade for Davis, as had veterans Rondo and Beasley.
A schism developed in the locker room. Sources around the team said it was apparent that the young players no longer trusted James, believing he was operating behind the scenes to get them traded to New Orleans.
At one point, some in Walton’s circles feared Paul was trying to use the Davis situation to leverage a coaching change, with the premise being that his arrival would require a higher-caliber coach. But the Lakers received backchannel information that Davis liked Walton and that relieved pressure on the third-year head coach.
The overall weight of the situation came to a head on Feb. 5, when the Lakers were blown out 136-94 in Indiana — their most lopsided defeat of the season.
The trade deadline came with the Lakers making only small moves. But they proved to be significant. In an effort to make up for the season-long shooting struggles, they traded rookie Svi Mykhailiuk to Detroit for Reggie Bullock, one of the NBA’s best spot-up shooters from 3, then Ivica Zubac and Beasley (less than a week removed from his locker room outburst) for Mike Muscala, who had landed with the Clippers after a trade from Philadelphia.
Trading Zubac, the Lakers’ starting center at the time, was a curious choice. After falling out of favor early in the season, he had become their most reliable big man. Muscala, a 27-year-old stretch forward, was shooting 39.2 percent from 3 on four attempts per game with the Sixers. In the Lakers’ last home game, Johnson and Pelinka watched Muscala score 17 points, including three 3s, to power the Sixers to a win at Staples Center.
Did that single performance inspire the Lakers to make the move? Some believe so.
Once the trade deadline was over and Davis remained in New Orleans, the trust issues that sprung up as a result of the very public talks remained. Johnson joined the team two days after the Feb. 7 deadline in Philadelphia, but his message, delivered 30 minutes before tipoff, seemed to be poorly received. Sources described players rolling their eyes at Johnson. They had gone days without hearing from the front office and the message from management now was, essentially, that they needed to toughen up. The Lakers lost in Philly that night, and again in Atlanta against the lowly Hawks.
When Kuzma went to Charlotte for All-Star Weekend to participate in the NBA’s Rising Stars Challenge, he sought an audience with Pelinka. Kuzma and his people came away from their chat feeling reassured, a source close to the situation told The Athletic. Pelinka told the second-year forward that he was key to the Lakers’ future and that, unless it was a trade for one of the game’s three best players, he wasn’t trading him.
A year earlier, Larry Nance Jr. approached Pelinka with a similar question.
Nance Jr. and his fiancée, his college girlfriend, were interested in buying a house. He wanted to get a sense of whether the Lakers planned on keeping him around, and Pelinka told him that the Lakers would only trade him if it meant landing one of the game’s three best players. He told him to buy the house, multiple sources confirmed.
Before Nance could get that far, however, he received a call on the morning of Feb. 8, 2018. He and Jordan Clarkson had been traded to Cleveland in a salary dump that cleared cap space for the Lakers to be able to offer two max slots in the summer.
When Buss railed against the media at the Sloan Conference on March 2, blaming the “fake news” relating to the Davis trade situation for hurting the morale among the team’s younger players, it was about more than that one story. Her frustration, according to a Lakers source with knowledge of her thinking, extended to another report that she didn’t mention.
In early February, ESPN’s Stephen A. Smith said on his radio show that Buss had been the driving force behind the decision to draft Ball second overall out of UCLA in 2017. According to Smith, Magic had wanted to draft De’Aaron Fox out of Kentucky but, in essence, succumbed because of the business possibilities that came with pairing the Bruins star with the Lakers brand. While the source adamantly denies the veracity of the report, and Johnson is known to have told Buss that he had nothing to do with this message being spread, these are the types of fires that kept flaring up in the media throughout the course of a chaotic campaign.
Last week, Buss appeared on a live taping of the Sports Business Radio Road Show, and described one story that made her doubt the front office she had put in place.
“There was a story that came out this season — and we’ve had our challenges this season — and it kind of made me doubt for a second some of the people that I was working with,” Buss said.
Following the All-Star break, the Lakers had 25 games to make their final push. They were 28-29 and in 10th place in the West. This was when James infamously declared he would “activate” for the stretch run. It was a statement he backed up with 29 points and 12 rebounds in a decisive win over the Rockets on Feb. 21. But after the turbulence of the season up to that point, the Lakers needed to keep it going.
“If we go on this road trip and drop two straight, then what does this game really mean?” Walton said, before the Lakers went on to lose in New Orleans and Memphis to two sub-.500 teams.
A week later, after LeBron passed the ball off the bottom of the backboard and the Lakers lost in Phoenix to fall to three games under .500, they returned home for perhaps their most critical game of the season. The Clippers were 4½ games ahead of the Lakers in the standings, with 19 games left in the year. Win and the Lakers could conceivably still go on a run and make the playoffs. Lose, and any hope of reaching the playoffs would essentially die.
Pelinka would not be on hand to witness the fate of the team he assembled. He made plans to scout the University of Texas’ game at Texas Tech and ended up watching the Lakers’ playoff dreams end from a local dinner spot in Lubbock, Texas, according to sources familiar with the situation.
The injuries kept piling up at an alarming rate. Ingram missed the Clippers game with a sore shoulder that turned out to be deep vein thrombosis, a blood clot that required surgery and has the potential to be career-altering. Hart was shut down prior to having a procedure done on his right patellar tendon. The knee had bothered him since January. Finally, after he was given the time to pass Michael Jordan on the all-time scoring list, James was shut down on March 30, with six games left on the calendar.
When it is over, the Lakers will have missed nearly 200 total games due to injuries.
With the season drawing to a close, finger pointing has begun within the walls of Lakers headquarters, primarily over the moves Johnson and Pelinka made once James committed. The roster construction has generally been viewed as a failure.
The Lakers are once again next-to-last in 3-point percentage and James’ usage rate (30.9 percent, about as high as it ever was with the Cavs) indicate additional playmakers didn’t help reduce his workload.
Who’s responsible for the experiment was the subject of some debate in Lakers circles recently.
One version of events that circulated within the Lakers’ walls — and does not bode well for Walton’s future — suggested that it was the coach’s desire to play James off the ball more that inspired the team’s emphasis on playmakers.
A source with knowledge of Walton’s thinking vehemently refuted the assertion, indicating that the sequence of events has been unfairly flip-flopped: Walton was given all these players who weren’t strong shooters but could handle the ball, and thus had no other choice but to find a way to play LeBron off the ball more. Other sources said the coaching staff was not consulted about potential targets in free agency, and that Walton was only looped in very late in the process.
However, that Magic Johnson summer league interview would seem to expose the theory as nothing more than revisionist history, after he broke down why Philadelphia struggled last spring while Boston and Houston both made deep runs.
“I built this team based on what happened in the playoffs,” Johnson said. “You don’t build the team just for the regular season. You’ve got to build it for the playoffs as well. … then Houston had tough guys. Boston had tough guys. So, what did I bring in? Tough guys. So that’s how I’m building it.”
However poorly those comments may reflect on Johnson nine months later and with a full season of evidence, a source with knowledge of Buss’ thinking said she still has complete faith in both Johnson and Pelinka.
The Lakers will now turn their attention to an offseason in which they are expected to revisit trade options for Davis, while also chasing top targets in free agency – as unlikely as it is that Kawhi Leonard, Kevin Durant or Klay Thompson will come, according to a league source who believes the Lakers will be second or third on those players’ lists. The fear that the Lakers could strike out with their top targets has already led to some message massaging.
“You don’t need names, you need games,” a source close to James told The Athletic. The Lakers could build a team of complementary pieces better suited for James, like Boston’s Marcus Morris or Milwaukee’s Nikola Mirotic, and fare better than they did this season. But it would run counter to Johnson’s stated philosophy. After all, on a World Series broadcast last fall, Johnson declared, “I’m going to get another superstar next summer!”
If that’s the only barometer of success, then, what will free agents make of the year that just was?
Growing pains were expected and a slow start wasn’t surprising. However, the season went so far off the rails, it’s impossible to know what the Lakers might have been if they were even reasonably healthy. Their 20-14 record on Christmas had the Lakers on pace for 48 wins. With one game left in the season, the Clippers, Thunder and Spurs are all fighting for final positioning with 47 wins.
After the All-Star break, the odds of the Lakers making the playoffs were even worse than they knew at the time. It would have taken a 20-5 streak to reach 48 wins.
Ultimately, the fate of the season will fall back on the injuries. Who can know what might have been? LeBron played 55 games, Ingram 52, Ball 47 and Rondo 46.
“It’s made it challenging,” Walton said. “Ideally they’d have had a lot more time together. But I do think a year is a year, either way. It’s not the ideal way of getting that experience, but they as a group now, we’ve gone through it. So, going into next season we should at least know what to expect.”
As LeBron learned this season, you never truly know.
— Shams Charania, Joe Vardon, Sam Amick and Frank Isola contributed to the reporting for this story.