How the Lakers Went From Champions to the Cellar

After Los Angeles won a championship in 2020, the front office has managed to create one of the worst rosters in the NBA.

Every week the Lakers find themselves capable of reaching a new level of cringe. This week, it was coach Darvin Ham essentially warning his players not to expect some kind of magical trade panacea, bringing up the team’s high salary numbers in a postgame press conference, even sneaking in a reference to the Lakers’ luxury tax bill. Ask yourself this: When was the last time a team’s start to the season was so bleak the coach was talking about the repeater tax 10 games into the season? Has that ever happened?

I know Los Angeles has become the NBA’s punching bag this season. It is the basketball equivalent of a tweet getting ratioed. Still, it’s truly difficult to be this bad with two top-20 players on one team. Frankly, it’s almost an accomplishment to have had LeBron James and Anthony Davis engineer their way to your organization and to then create a roster that likely won’t even make the playoffs. How have the Lakers messed up so badly? Here’s a recap of the damaging moves the front office has made to put the team in this position since signing LeBron.

2018–19

Let’s start with LeBron’s first season in Los Angeles. When James signed, the Lakers were in the mix for some other stars the same summer, though they couldn’t close the deal on the likes of Paul George and Kawhi Leonard. Then president of basketball ops Magic Johnson couldn’t even get a meeting with George, who apparently was slightly miffed with the team for not trading for him the year before. It was the first time LeBron had made a free-agent decision without pairing up with another star. (Remember when he didn’t mention Andrew Wiggins in his Sports Illustrated letter and then Wiggins was traded for Kevin Love?)

This summer was the first sign that the team was willing to fill out the roster with, um, curious fits. Lance Stephenson, Michael Beasley, Rajon Rondo and JaVale McGee were among those acquired in the summer. And also, Luke Walton remained the coach, something Rich Paul allegedly complained to Adam Silver about at some point that season.

Even with the lack of star power and the iffy veteran additions, this Lakers team was actually decent! They were in good shape headed into December until LeBron got injured. The biggest issue for this team was James played only 55 games. Per Cleaning the Glass, the Lakers played at a 48-win pace with a 2.7 net rating with LeBron on the floor in 2018–19.

But L.A. couldn’t help itself when it came to a shortsighted move. With the season already off the rails in February, the Lakers dumped Ivica Zubac (and Beasley) for Mike Muscala. Zubac has since become a fixture for the Clippers, and at worst could have been a tradeable contract for the Lakers had they re-signed him in the summer. Muscala was meant to help with the team’s poor spacing (a soon-to-be-recurring theme!), but he didn’t make much of an impact and was gone in the summer.

2019–20

This was the summer the Lakers acquired Davis. While you could argue they gave up too much in the trade by sending out Lonzo Ball, Brandon Ingram and Josh Hart (in addition to the picks), LeBron was too good not to bring in a second star. And at this time, AD was someone most expected to be a perennial MVP candidate.

Before the season stoppage, this Lakers team was thriving. James and Davis were healthy. Frank Vogel had coaxed the best defense in the league from this group. And despite the shooting being suspect overall, this roster did have two-way talent in Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, Danny Green and Kyle Kuzma, all of whom proved to be valuable during the title run in the bubble. It also helped that Davis had the best shooting season of his career.

2020–21

O.K., so this was actually a great summer for the Lakers. Unfortunately, the front office’s willingness to heavily tinker with the championship core would prove to be foreboding. After winning the title in Orlando, Rob Pelinka traded Danny Green and a pick for Dennis Schröder, who was coming off the best season of his career. Definitely not a bad move if LeBron wanted some ballhandling help.

L.A. picked up Wes Matthews, who currently remains a solid 3-and-D player for the Bucks. Montrezl Harrell, then the reigning Sixth Man of the Year, was a sensible addition even given his playoff struggles. Pelinka also nabbed Marc Gasol, a stretch big who could hang defensively and not clog up the offense. This was Pelinka’s best summer, and this team was probably the best one he put together.

James and Davis had an 11.2 net rating together in 2020–21, their best mark as teammates. Per CTG, L.A. had a 16.9 net rating when Davis played at center. The Lakers played at a 64-win pace with James on the floor, a higher pace than the championship season. The starting lineup of LeBron, AD, Schröder, KCP and Gasol had a 13.2 net rating and was elite on both ends of the floor.

(One head-scratching signing here was Andre Drummond, who joined late in the year and then started over Gasol, alienating the better center on the team.)

The reason this team did not make it out of the first round was injuries. LeBron and AD played in only 27 games together, and Davis was hurt in the postseason. This was a really well-constructed roster that had to battle empty arenas, COVID-19 and an incredibly quick turnaround from the 2020 Finals. So what did the front office do given the encouraging on-court numbers and obvious context for why this team didn’t succeed? It overreacted and blew everything up.

2021–22

This is probably one of the most destructive offseasons in NBA history; I’m not even sure where to begin.

Gasol is eventually traded even after he helped the team the year before. The Lakers reportedly have a trade in place to send Kuzma and Harrell to the Kings for Buddy Hield—helping their longstanding shooting issues—but instead trade Kuzma, KCP and Harrell to the Wizards for Russell Westbrook.

And because of Westbrook’s large incoming salary and ownership seemingly wanting to keep the tax bill low, a domino effect of terrible moves followed. The team chose Talen Horton-Tucker over Alex Caruso, though they could have kept both. And then came a rash of minimum signings: Carmelo Anthony, Kent Bazemore, Trevor Ariza, Malik Monk, Dwight Howard and Wayne Ellington. Of those six players, only Monk is currently on an NBA roster. Kendrick Nunn was also signed, but he missed all of last season and is part of the problem on the current team.

You know what happened from here. Westbrook became an awful fit. The vet minimum signings proved ineffective. LeBron and AD missed time. The Lakers didn’t even make the play-in. And Frank Vogel, not even two years after leading the team to a title, was let go.

(And to add insult to injury, the Lakers may now need to attach two firsts to Russ to help acquire … Buddy Hield.)

Recap

Put all these moves together, and it’s maddening. Here is what the Lakers’ rotation actually could have been had Los Angeles been like the Warriors and paid deep into the luxury tax to keep everyone together/not gone haywire trying to fix what wasn’t actually broken/not only tried to placate LeBron and AD:

Starters: Dennis Schröder, Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, Kyle Kuzma, LeBron James, Anthony Davis

Bench: Alex Caruso, Patrick Beverley, Ivica Zubac, Wes Matthews (or 3-and-D equivalent)

All the Lakers had to do was not make the Zubac trade or the Russ trade, and retain Caruso and Matthews. They could’ve still traded THT for Pat Bev. This fake roster may not leap off the page, but those are nine guys who can contribute in a playoff series to this day. Caruso, KCP, Zubac and Matthews are all valued by their current teams, all of whom are competitive. This hypothetical group doesn’t even include a taxpayer mid-level signing or other vet minimums. (What if L.A. had pushed hard for Otto Porter Jr. or Bruce Brown in the summer?) And it would have much more favorable contracts to trade than the Westbrook one, meaning the team would be less pressured to deal its future firsts. (The LeBron-AD-Caruso-Schröder-KCP lineup played 32 minutes together in 2021 by the way … and was a plus-29.)

And this is not just the benefit of hindsight! All these moves—dumping Zubac, letting Caruso walk, not trading for Hield, trading for Russ—were criticized heavily as they happened. Instead Pelinka, while being enabled by Jeanie Buss (in partnership with LeBron and Davis, it should be noted) kept hammering away at a roster that needed less help than they realized. And with Pelinka signing an extension before this season, the Lakers’ only way out of the abyss is for the same people who got them into this mess to try to wheel and deal their way out. Good luck.