Rob Pelinka's Poor Roster Decisions May Cost Lakers in Big Way for 2024-25

Some unnecessarily long-term Los Angeles decisions are coming home to roost this year.

Sep 25, 2024; El Segundo, CA, USA; Los Angeles Lakers general manager Rob Pelinka at press conference at UCLA Health Training Center. Mandatory Credit: Kirby Lee-Imagn Images / Kirby Lee-Imagn Images

Los Angeles Lakers vice president of basketball operations and general manager Rob Pelinka has had a wildly up-and-down career guiding his team's front office since 2017.

Formerly the agent to Kobe Bryant, Pelinka initially served under five-time Lakers champion point guard Magic Johnson for his first two seasons with the club. Since then, the 54-year-old has led the Lakers to the 2020 championship and a pair of Western Conference Finals berths. Only two Lakers — future Hall of Famers LeBron James and Anthony Davis — overlapped between the 2020 Western Conference Finals iteration and the '23 version. It's a credit to Pelinka, as much as it is to James and Davis, that L.A. managed to achieve that with such vastly different rosters.

Then again, Pelinka did give much of that 2020 club the boot by the summer of 2021, all in service of constructing a hilariously aging and unathletic club top-lined by past-their-prime future Hall of Famers like Russell Westbrook, Dwight Howard, and Carmelo Anthony. Then-rookie Austin Reaves looked surprisingly adept playing next to all the old guys, but it wasn't quite clear yet whether the underdraft shooting guard out of Oklahoma had benefitted favorably by comparison or was a legitimate NBA-level player. The Los Angeles faithful now know, of course, that it was the latter.

Pelinka pivoted, dramatically, midway through the 2022-23 season, moving on from the bloated contracts of veteran guards Westbrook, Patrick Beverley, and Kendrick Nunn and re-balancing his roster in the process. He seemed to make further clever personnel moves that subsequent summer, led by his signings of Gabe Vincent and Taurean Prince. Both signings essentially tanked, but were totally acceptable transactions, for their price points, at the time. It turns out he should have retained Dennis Schröder instead of replacing him with Vincent, who missed all but 11 games with a knee injury. Even the decision to bring back underperforming point guard D'Angelo Russell on a one-plus-one deal made sense at the time.

Where Pelinka erred to head-scratching effect, however, was in a trio of more marginal signings. He brought on well-traveled former lottery picks Jaxson Hayes and Cam Reddish, plus power forward/center Christian Wood, on veteran's minimum contracts. Taking fliers on three once-intriguing, still-athletic frontcourt pieces in and of itself wasn't particularly heinous. What was bizarre — and now looks even worse — was Pelinka's decision to give all of them two-year deals with player options for 2024-25. None of this trio popped, and subsequently none had any free agent value on the open market, which compelled all of them to pick up their options.

Paying three end-of-bench players minimum deals in the abstract may not seem egregious on its face, but all are now essentially wasting roster spots that could have gone to, say, Tyus Jones or Gary Trent, both of whom stunningly inked veteran's minimum "prove-it" deals this summer on pseudo-contenders (the Phoenix Suns and Milwaukee Bucks, respectively).

Why did Pelinka give all three of Hayes, Reddish and Wood these one-plus-one agreements? Was anyone beating down the door for their services last year? Wood may have had the best on-court production prior to the 2023-24 season, but he had also burned his way through seven teams in his previous seven NBA seasons amidst rumored locker-room chemistry issues. Hayes remains frustratingly raw, although he at least has the athletic tools to be a good defender. Reddish actually can be a plus-defender on occasion, but his offensive limitations make him a major risk to play as a rotation piece.

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