Lakers News: League Executives Predict How L.A. Will Approach Rest Of Season

Your Los Angeles Lakers have gotten off to such a brutally terrible 3-10 start, and have looked so talent-poor in doing it, that they're already looking like a sunk cost for the 2022-23 NBA season, despite fielding a roster with two NBA 75 honorees in LeBron James and Anthony Davis, both of whom remain All-Star-level talents when they're healthy.

After the team's 33-49 2021-22 season, team vice president of basketball operations Rob Pelinka canned championship-winning head coach Frank Vogel and swapped out most of its role players for younger, more athletic depth to support James, Davis, and extremely-overpaid ex-All-Star Russell Westbrook, while working under the tutelage of new head coach Darvin Ham.

It's now pretty clear (if it wasn't already) that the issue is not coaching, but Pelinka's roster choices. It all starts with the team's decision to move on from solid, deep role players in exchange for Westbrook, who even in his prime would have been an awkward on-court fit with James, given that both players are at their best with the ball in their hands.

Steve Bulpett of Heavy reports that the Lakers may be grappling with an uncertain present, but executives around the league seem to believe it would behoove the team to not punt on its future (i.e. trading its two fairly valuable 2027 and 2029 first-round draft picks) to placate James or Davis and help the team improve slightly this year.

“I think the Lakers are going to ride it out for a while,” one team general manager who's been active lately exploring the trade market informed Bulpett. “I don’t know what else they can do. They have to consider the fact they’re going to have a lot of salary cap space coming up, and do they really want to take that away by spending now on a team that isn’t going anywhere?"

“I’ve heard the names that are being thrown around, but I don’t see anything that’s going to give them a real chance at winning anything. They’re better off letting Russell (Westbrook)’s $47 million come off the books and seeing where they are then. If they were to find someone to take him now, they’d have to be taking on salary that will push into next year and probably beyond. That’s just sticking them in the mud for more years. The important thing is getting out of the mud, not looking slightly better while you’re in it.”

This makes sense tactically, but at the same time it sure is a waste of James's year-37 season. Outside of a Davis trade, it's unclear just what L.A. would be able to move that could really elevate this team beyond, say, a .500 record and a play-in tournament finish (i.e. a 7-10 seed). Several moves have been discussed for Westbrook, but due to his bloated expiring contract, the common expectation is that the Lakers would need to surrender draft equity in any deal, and that the team would be adding non-All-Star role players back that would improve the team without necessarily making them contenders

L.A. is caught between a rock and a hard place.