Lakers News: L.A.'s Suffering Delights Rivals
Your Los Angeles Lakers have stumbled to a 3-10 start and seem to be at risk of slipping into the lottery this season, which would be quite disastrous given that they don't even possess the rights to their own draft pick in 2023 (the New Orleans Pelicans can swap its own first-round pick with L.A.'s).
In a new piece, Steve Bulpett of Heavy spoke with a seasoned NBA executive about the current state of the Lakers franchise, with ownership now having transferred to Jeanie Buss, daughter of Dr. Jerry Buss, who purchased the club in 1979, and served as its governor until 2013.
“My point always was that these guys had no f***ing clue," a seasoned NBA executive relayed to Bulpett. "I said, when the old man [Dr. Buss] dies and Jerry West leaves and a real professional like [former team president] Mitch Kupchak leaves the Lakers, that you’re gonna see the fastest free fall of a legacy franchise you’ve ever seen... That’s exactly what happened. So they managed to pull LeBron in and got involved with him and Klutch, and he came in and got them a championship in the bubble. That’s it. After that, there’s no more championships."
The team constructed initially around LeBron James and co-star Anthony Davis, outside of perhaps the point guard role (which James filled), seemed built to contend for at least a few years.
Rather than stay the course with quality depth, Buss, James, Davis and team vice president of basketball operations Rob Pelinka decided in 2021 to go for the "Big Three" approach that had served James so well with the Miami Heat and the Cleveland Cavaliers, offloading most of its remaining depth for then-Washington Wizards point guard Russell Westbrook, having clearly not registered his decline from his 2017 All-Star days nor how awkward his fit along James was going to be.
“Look where they are now and tell me when the hell they’re going to have a chance to compete for a championship again," the executive concluded.
