Lakers have options to win with LeBron James

The day after the Los Angeles Lakers’ season ended with a win, general manager Rob Pelinka told reporters that the team was determined to “keep a core of young guys together.”

This quote did not escape the attention of Washington Wizards forward Kyle Kuzma, who was drafted by the Lakers in 2017.

“Heard It Before” Kuzma tweeted. on Tuesday, adding four crying emojis to the post.

Kuzma spent his first season in the NBA with the Lakers, playing alongside lottery picks Lonzo Ball, Julius Randle, and Brandon Ingram, as well as a number of other young players who went on to play important roles on other teams.

They were all sent or fired to acquire star players who the Lakers hoped could become champions immediately. In July 2019, after the Lakers missed the playoffs, Kuzma survived an Anthony Davis trade that sent Ball, Ingram, and Josh Hart to the New Orleans Pelicans for Davis. The next season, the Lakers won the championship. But a year later, after losing in the first round of the playoffs, the Lakers traded Kuzma to the Washingtons in a deal for Russell Westbrook, hoping he would help them win the next championship.

The question before the Lakers this offseason is whether they can and should they be patient. On the one hand, they just lost in the Western Conference Finals to a team from Denver who showed how sustainability can pay off. On the other hand, the Lakers are led by LeBron James, 38, who wants to win now.

This tension will drag on the Lakers as they decide what to do next.

“Obviously we’re incredibly proud of this group that made it to the Western Conference Finals,” Pelinka said Tuesday at the end-of-season press conference, where he said the team’s goal has always been to work towards a championship. “After the trade deadline, we had one of the best results in the league. Maintaining this continuity will be very important. We ended up being eliminated by a team that had great consistency.”

The Lakers have had a lot of turnover in recent years, but their results this year have shown they have a foundation to build on. Darwin Ham, their freshman head coach, began to find effective rotations that helped the Lakers go from the worst record in the NBA to the Conference Finals.

“It’s been a hell of a year,” Ham said. He mentioned the support of Pelinka and Lakers owner Jeanie Buss before adding, “To get through some of these hard times earlier, we don’t get that kind of support, we probably won’t live to see this point. “

Their list is promising. After the trade deadline, the Lakers competed well, although they had little time to recover. Guard Austin Reeves was a great fit alongside James and Davis, and Rui Hachimura, acquired in a trade in January, provided the necessary attacks. Dennis Schroeder was defensively critical. Lonnie Walker, Jarred Vanderbilt, and D’Angelo Russell have also had success in the postseason. Walker, for example, saved the Lakers. 15 points in the fourth quarter against Golden State in Game 4 of the second round.

The Lakers haven’t been built around youth this season, so it takes a bit of guesswork to understand what Pelinka means by “the young core of the team.” But Reeves is probably a key part of it.

Even Reeves and Hachimura restricted free agents this year; Russell, Walker and Schroeder are unrestricted free agents.

“We don’t know what kind of team we’ll have next year,” Davis said. “But whatever it is, whoever comes to training camp with the intent to create this chemistry, build this foundation, LeBron and I set the tone, trying to come back here and beyond.”

Due to the small amount of time they’ve spent together, it’s hard to say how much more they could have moved forward.

When James joined the Lakers as a free agent in 2018, some of his teammates were closer to his eldest son’s age than his. He said that he knew that working in this team would require patience, and he said that he was ready to wait. But it quickly became clear that he did not like this time.

The Lakers missed the playoffs in 2018-19 due in part to major injuries to James and Ball. Midway through the season, James began hinting that he wanted the Lakers to take Davis away from the Pelicans. That summer, the Lakers completed the deal.

“Yeah,” James told the Los Angeles Times when asked if he’s glad he doesn’t have to endure anymore. “Because last year I was patient and you see where that got me.”

He displayed the same impatience on Monday after the Nuggets won their series, saying he “doesn’t play for anything other than winning championships at this point in his career.”

James hinted at ending his career after 20 seasons.

“We’ll see what happens next,” James said. “I don’t know. I don’t know. I have a lot to think about, to be honest. I have a lot to think about, to be honest. Personally, as I develop in basketball, I have a lot to think about.”

Later he directly said ESPN And Bleach Report that he is about to retire.

“LeBron has given as much to basketball as any other player,” Pelinka said. “When you do that, you get to decide if you’re going to give more.”

Some have taken James’s words as a sign that he has been tired over the past four months as he has put in Herculean efforts to play through a torn tendon in his leg, or that perhaps his friend Carmelo Anthony announces his retirement this week made him wonder if he should too.

It’s also possible he was trying to pressure the Lakers to get a roster that could win a championship next year – perhaps by finding a way to acquire his former teammate Kyrie Irving, the controversy-ridden point guard who attended Game 4 of the Western. . Conference final despite restrictive new salary cap rules. Irving is phenomenally talented, but he has struggled to make a difference in teams ever since helping James win a championship in Cleveland in 2016.

The Lakers aren’t as accustomed to delayed gratification as most other teams. The wait between getting a big star to win and winning didn’t take long when it worked.

The Lakers selected Magic Johnson with the No. 1 pick. 1st overall pick in 1979 and won the championship in his rookie season and then four more over the next decade.

It took a few more years to pay off their key signings in the summer of 1996—Shaquille O’Neal (free agent) and Kobe Bryant (post-draft)—but they never missed the playoffs before winning three championships in a row. .

They added Pau Gasol to Bryant’s team in February 2008, lost in the NBA Finals four months later, and then went on to win back-to-back championships.

And Davis, like Johnson, immediately helped the Lakers win the championship. It was only James’ second year in Los Angeles.

Conversely, the Nuggets have spent years building this team.

They waited while their point guard Jamal Murray busied himself with a lengthy recovery from an ACL tear. Murray’s injury came in April 2021, after the Nuggets formed a roster that appeared to be capable of winning a championship. His recovery delayed this schedule.

They could afford to wait as their main star, Nikola Jokic, is not yet 20 years old.

The reward for their patience is a team that looked serene in difficult moments, whose players completely blend into each other. The rookies of this season immediately understood the culture.

But James is 10 years older than Jokic and that presents a unique challenge. No star has ever played as well as he did at his age. He may not be at his peak, but he is still one of the best players in the game. The night Denver ended its season, he scored 40 points, more than anyone on any team.

James doesn’t want to wait, but quick fixes don’t always work; see the exchange for Westbrook, who sent Kuzma to Washington. The Lakers missed the playoffs in Westbrook’s rookie season and traded him this season for young players who helped but couldn’t win everything.

Based on what the Lakers have established this year, they wouldn’t start from scratch if they chose to stay on their current path. But it may take longer than James has left.