Los Angeles Lakers: What exactly was the plan at the NBA Trade Deadline

My First Thoughts about the trade deadline:

At first, I thought that Magic and Pelinka destroyed the Lakers morale and traded away Zubac because they wanted the Purple and Gold to miss the playoffs?

I thought that Magic and Pelinka couldn’t possibly be as stupid as they’ve looked the last couple of weeks. Maybe they’re the two shrewdest executives in the league.

Perhaps after LeBron went down with his weird little injury, Magic and Pelinka scanned the Western Conference Playoff scene and saw that the best the Lakers could do after James came back was to sneak into the playoffs as the 7th or 8th seed.

Possibly, Magic and Pelinka met up and decided that a 1st round exit to the Warriors or Nuggets didn’t make sense and that the best thing for the future of the organization was to orchestrate a super-secret tank job.

Maybe they knew that they couldn’t sell another year of missing the playoffs to the ravenous LA fan base, so they self-sabotaged the Lakers because they wanted the Purple and Gold to end up in the lottery one more time. That would give LA a chance at Zion, or Barrett, or one of the other top-tier college prospects.

After the Lakers missed the playoffs again this year, Magic and Pelinka would meet with the young core and tell them that they never actually planned on trading them and that for the future of the franchise, they had to perform some mental battle tactics against them. After the young core heard the plan and they realized they were never actually on the trade block, they’d work twice as hard over the summer.

Then all Magic and Pelinka would have to do is convince either Kawhi Leonard or Kevin Durant that the trade deadline debacle was all done on purpose. They’d just have to let them know that they were playing chess while the rest of the NBA executives were playing checkers.

Finally, the Lakers would head into next season with their young core intact and motivated, one more talented rookie, and another max-free agent to play alongside LeBron.