Writer Wonders What Would Have Happened Had Lakers Retained Championship Core In 2021
While the Lakers won it all in 2020, many wonder what could've been for that championship core that failed to repeat the following season.
Among those who speculate that the Lakers could've done more to help their championship roster was Tim Bontemps of ESPN, who had much to say on how the team approached their quest to go back-to-back.
Instead of trading for Westbrook, the Lakers keep that 2020 title group together -- meaning
Kyle Kuzma
and
Kentavious Caldwell-Pope
are never traded, and
Alex Caruso
isn't lost as a salary casualty while the Lakers ducked the luxury tax with Westbrook's gigantic contract on their books.
via Tim Bontemps, ESPN
In retrospect, the decision to bring in Russell Westbrook from Washington before the 2022 season was an outright disaster for the Lakers as they missed the playoffs that season and nearly did in 2023.
Rob Pelinka decided to finally pull the plug on the Westbrook experiment in this year's past trade deadline, opting to build depth around his two stars of Lebron James and Anthony Davis rather than keep a third massive contract on the roster.
The pieces brought back from the Westbrook trade included D'Angelo Russell from the Timberwolves and Malik Beasley and Jared Vanderbilt from the Jazz.
Even with a midseason injury to Lebron James, the new depth for the Laker propelled the purple and gold up the Western Conference standings and into the postseason. There, the Lakers took out two higher seeds in the Memphis Grizzlies and the Golden State Warriors.
In the Western Conference Finals, the Lakers' pursuit for banner #18 was stopped in it's tracks after old friend Kentavious Caldwell-Pope and new teammates Nikola Jokic and Jamal Murray swept the Lakers en route to their first championship in franchise history.
While Kuzma has turned into a 20 PPG scorer with the Wizards, Caruso has continued to be an invaluable defensive presence and Caldwell-Pope proved to be the missing piece for Denver's championship quest, the Lakers surely learned their lesson.
By a flurry of offseason moves that prioritized bringing back their playoff core, the Lakers are poised to bring another Larry O'Brien trophy to the streets of Los Angeles.
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