With Magic Johnson and Rob Pelinka at the helm, the Los Angeles Lakers have been hard at work this offseason. On Tuesday afternoon the team held a press conference for new signee Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, but before then the biggest move the team made was a trade.
The Lakers sent D’Angelo Russell and Timofey Mozgov to the Brooklyn Nets for Brook Lopez and the 27th overall pick in the draft which turned into forward Kyle Kuzma. Both Magic and Russell have spoken about the move with Magic saying he wanted more of a leader at point guard, while Russell said everything is in the past now.
After the Caldwell-Pope press conference, Magic spoke with a group of reporters with the Russell trade coming up again. According to Eric Pincus of Bleacher Report, Magic said it wasn’t hard to move on from Russell:
Magic said Lakers had 5 teams calling about Russell, I asked if that was a hard decision, moving on from D'Lo… Answer was basically "no"
— Eric Pincus (@EricPincus) July 18, 2017
Magic would elaborate that once he’s moved on from someone, he’s completely done with them via Pincus:
Magic said once he moves on from someone, there's no looking back
— Eric Pincus (@EricPincus) July 18, 2017
In between his time as a player and becoming Lakers President of basketball operations, Magic obviously became one of the best and richest businessmen in America. His mindset here is one of pure business as once someone or something is gone there’s no use in harboring on about it.
Now that the deal is done Magic is solely focused on the Lakers only, as he should be. Regardless of Russell’s talent, he is no longer with the team and Magic is not worried about him at all anymore. With the amount of young talent on the roster Magic has more than enough to focus on.
