The Los Angeles Lakers’ front office will be under gargantuan pressure to make the team competitive again after a disastrous 2021-22 season.
The Lakers finished the campaign with a 33-49 record and without playoff basketball. None of LeBron James’ past teams finished with fewer wins in an NBA season, further emphasizing the organization’s failures.
Lakers vice president of basketball operations and general manager Rob Pelinka said James’ legacy will be a factor in the organization’s efforts to build a title-worthy roster.
“I think first, LeBron James is a player that’s on the Mount Rushmore of basketball and every season of his 19 so far has to be looked at as a precious commodity, and we need to do all we can to be caretakers of his legacy and to try to build the best team we can around him,” Pelinka said.
“And that’s something that we had the objective for that last year and obviously this roster did not work. But there’s a great level of trust in our collaboration with him to make sure we get it right this summer and fix it.”
Pelinka added he’s confident the Lakers’ leadership has learned from the 2021-22 failures. He thinks the front office will be able to give James, Anthony Davis and the team an opportunity to fight for the championship again — just like after James’ debut season with the Purple and Gold.
“[B]uilding a team around LeBron and Anthony is unique,” he said,
“It may be different than a team with young players or developing players. And so that of course goes into the metrics of the decisions we make, but I think it’s important that we’re gonna address certain areas of our roster and I don’t think that today is the day to get entirely granular, we have several months to figure all those things out.
“But I think we have to get better on multiple fronts and we will this summer and I’m confident like we did in 2019 after a year of disappointment, we put our heads together, our basketball operations department is led by some great minds, Kurt Rambis, Joey Buss, and Jesse Buss, help me make decisions and I think we’ll spend the next several weeks and months doing an autopsy of what worked well and what didn’t work well this year and come out of that with a clear plan of how to get right in July.”
Pelinka says he will seek James & Davis’ advice but roster decisions will ultimately be his own
Pelinka reiterated he will have the final say on the Lakers’ personnel decision in the 2022 offseason — although he will welcome input from his team’s stars.
“I think the important thing is that at the end of the day, the roster decisions ultimately rest on my shoulders and I will take input from LeBron and Anthony as our two captains, I have done that during my entire tenure,” he said.
“But at the end of the day, I think I’m the one who leads the basketball operations department and will take ultimate accountability for the roster decisions that are made.
“Our dialogue with our captains is open and has been very productive but it’s important that we are seen as the ultimate decision-makers and that’s the way it will go and has gone.”
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