Who is to blame for the Lakers’ demise?

With the Lakers now officially nixed from play-in contention, it feels an appropriate time to conduct a port-mortem.

How did a team with genuine championship aspirations fail to hit a target as unambitious as the play-in tournament?

LeBron James’ four-year experience as a Laker has been mixed, to say the least; comprised of dizzying highs and nauseating lows.

The one constant has been roster turnover; only the Pelicans and the Wizards have experienced a higher percentage of roster turnover than the Lakers over the past four seasons. Those two teams have won a combined one playoff game in that stretch.

After securing the franchise’s 17th title in a COVID-affected 2020 season, the Lakers were in as strong a position as any to make another run at a title. They lost just five games that postseason, strangling opponents with a defensive system built on dogged point-of-attack activity, communication and trust between the chasers and rim protectors, and the brilliance of Defensive Player of the Year finalist Anthony Davis.

The Lakers had again cemented themselves as title contenders following the upgrades they made over the subsequent offseason. They sent Danny Green and a late first-rounder (which ended up being Jaden McDaniels) to the Thunder for Dennis Schröder, they swapped out JaVale McGee and Dwight Howard for Montrezl Harrell and Marc Gasol, brought in Wes Matthews and re-signed Anthony Davis and Kentavious Caldwell-Pope to multi-year deals. They improved offensively without surrendering an awful lot defensively. The shortest offseason in league history, however, proved costly; Davis played in just 36 games and James in just 45. They plummeted down the standings after a 21-6 start and scraped into the playoffs after a three-point play-in victory over the Warriors. They were up 2-1 on the eventual Western Conference Champion Phoenix Suns before Davis again went down injured, virtually ending their season.

The 2020-21 Lakers were a good team. They finished with the league’s best defensive rating through the 72-game regular season and were at a 51-win pace in games that James and Davis both appeared in. Ultimately, injuries to their stars cost them any shot of going back-to-back.

Despite this, the front office hit the panic button and, as a result, this postseason will not feature the most decorated brand in basketball.

So, who is to blame for the Lakers’ demise?

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Pointing the finger at ownership is a good place to start. Calls for the Buss Family Trust to sell their stake in the franchise have re-surfaced, which comes as little of a surprise. Not only has ownership proven themselves unwilling spenders but the allowance of constant meddling from inept and unqualified personnel has hamstrung the franchise in a way reminiscent of the mid-2010s. Ownership has long valued those with past connections to the franchise over more suitable individuals; a mind-boggling organisational structure for a multi-billion dollar franchise.

Kurt Rambis, who won a quartet of championships with the Lakers across the 1980s and spent over a decade with the team as an assistant, and wife Linda are two of Jeanie Buss’ most trusted advisors and confidants. Despite owning a win percentage of just .284 as an NBA head coach, Kurt Rambis is a pillar of a four-pronged brains trust in the front office. Wife Linda, meanwhile, who was hired in the late 1970s to work with the franchise’s marketing department makes up another quarter of said brains trust, despite possessing little basketball nous, and also happens to one of Jeanie’s closest friends. General Manager and Vice President of Basketball Operations Rob Pelinka is the public front man of the Lakers’ front office, whilst Jeanie is the franchise’s Governor and Chief Executive Officer.

After Magic Johnson resigned as President of Basketball Operations at the end of James’ first season with the franchise, Pelinka was left to pick up the crumbs and restabilise the team – a task he completed rather successfully. He was in charge for both the 2019 and 2020 off-seasons and built a pair of championship contenders, with a ring to show for it. The 2021 off-season, however, was an unmitigated disaster.

Pelinka is at considerable fault for the way the season played out, however, a raft of voices with differing sentiments and theories made his job much harder than it should have been, not to mention Jeanie deciding to turn to the likes of Magic Johnson and Phil Jackson, who are a combined 138 years old, for advice. Pelinka pivoted to Russell Westbrook after initially showing interest in DeMar DeRozan and Buddy Hield, both of whom better fits alongside James and Davis, reportedly after the two All-Stars came to him requesting he make a move to acquire the former-MVP. Any rift between the front office and James and Davis – who along with Talen Horton-Tucker and Kendrick Nunn – are represented by Klutch Sports, would cause considerable damage. Westbrook was in ownership of the league’s second-highest usage rate over the four seasons prior to this one and was owed over $92 million over the next two seasons, despite also owning the highest turnover total over the same timespan and a career playoff three-point percentage of under 30 per cent. On top of that, the Lakers sent away two members of their 2020 title squad in Kentavious Caldwell-Pope and Kyle Kuzma, a bigman who was only a season removed from a Sixth Man of the Year Award in Montrezl Harrell and a first-round pick.

To compound this, they let their third-highest scorer from the previous season Dennis Schröder jet off to Boston in free agency and opted against re-signing proven defensive ace and plus-minus savant Alex Caruso, despite his interest in returning, either due to luxury tax concerns or a lack of faith in his ability – both are which are awful justifications. They instead dedicated $32 million to Talen Horton-Tucker, which would have surely appeased his representation and used their mid-level exception on Kendrick Nunn, who missed the entire season with a bone bruise in his right knee. Last season, the Lakers acquired Andre Drummond on the buyout market, whose immediate inclusion in the starting lineup discouraged then-starter Marc Gasol. Over the offseason, Drummond signed with Philadelphia on a minimum-deal and Gasol opted to return to Spain, leaving the team in search of competent bigmen.

The acquisition of Westbrook stymied any salary cap versatility and forced Pelinka to fill out the roster with minimum contracts; enter Carmelo Anthony, Kent Bazemore, Malik Monk, Trevor Ariza, Dwight Howard, Wayne Ellington, DeAndre Jordan, Rajon Rondo, Austin Reaves and Avery Bradley. Anthony and Monk were the only two of these players who did not receive a “DNP – Coach’s Decision” across the season; the Lakers struggled to manage any semblance of an NBA rotation throughout the entire season. The lack of depth was compounded by injuries to James and Davis, who missed 25 and 39 games respectively.

The coaching staff never worked out how to best involve Westbrook, who shot over four percentage points below league average true-shooting percentage, led the league in total turnovers, and the Lakers were four points per 100 possessions worse off with on the floor. Head coach Frank Vogel is expected to be let go prior to next season, which is unsurprising. Vogel’s insistence on overplaying the likes of Avery Bradley and DeAndre Jordan frustrated fans for much of the season and, whilst a plethora of things outside of his control sunk the Lakers’ season, he did little to help himself. A high-level defensive coach who was unable to adapt to an overhauled, offensive-minded roster, Vogel should have little trouble finding a role as an assistant but given the state of the team, moving on is probably best for both parties. Failing to appoint a high-level, offensive-minded assistant was one of Pelinka’s most understated yet crucial mistakes. The Lakers looked porous and lost defensively, whilst being a completely incoherent rabble on the other end. Given the Lakers’ past hiring procedures, the odds of the front office prioritising acumen over familiarity when appointing a new coach this summer appear slim.

The players deserve blame but given how many of them are veterans on minimum contracts, only so much of it is reasonable. James and Davis deserve flak for their insistence on bringing in Westbrook but as for their on-court endeavours, both were largely productive when healthy. Westbrook, meanwhile, played at about the level that was expected; he consistently turned the ball over and missed makeable shots on his way to strong enough counting stats. Expecting a 33-year-old former-MVP to change his play-style in the name of the greater good despite zero previous attempts to do so was always a pipe dream. Given the Lakers roster was made up of veterans on either minimum or max deals with little in between, general activity and hustle players were more often than not few and far between. Cameos from fresher legs such as Austin Reaves, Stan Johnson, and Wenyen Gabriel provided some type of buzz but relying on these types of players is not conducive to long-term winning.

In short, no one is free of blame.

Ownership was cheap and too often reliant on an overabundance of ineffectual voices and the star players meddled in front office operations in far too great a capacity. This combination led those in the front office into poor decisions that resulted in a farrago of a roster that was unable to mesh with the strengths of a maladaptive coaching staff. It takes a special level of incompetence to fail to qualify for even the play-in tournament with LeBron James or Anthony Davis on your team, let alone the both of them.

So, is there a path forward in which the Lakers realign and re-cement themselves as a contender? Probably.

Will the brains trust pave said path? Doubtful.

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