The Los Angeles Lakers are lottery-bound this season, and one of the biggest reasons why the Purple and Gold have struggled this year is because of the roster that Magic Johnson and Rob Pelinka put together.
After the Los Angeles Lakers front office duo of “Maginka” signed LeBron James, they had a solid young core surrounding “The King,” that looked like this:
- LeBron James
- Brandon Ingram
- Lonzo Ball
- Kyle Kuzma
- Josh Hart
- Ivica Zubac
- Moritz Wagner
- Sviatoslav Mykhailiuk
That’s a nice group -inexperienced- but nevertheless, an “agreeable” assortment of players.
The formula on how to construct a winning team around LeBron James was solved years ago by the Miami Heat. All you have to do is surround James with good 3-and-D players and then find players who can defend the lane.
The group listed above can play defense and Zubac can defend the lane, but according to the simple recipe needed to get to the playoffs (and hopefully make some noise in the playoffs), the Lakers still needed shooting and more defense in the middle.
Magic Johnson and Rob Pelinka decided that the common methodology on how to win with “King James” wouldn’t work in the Western Conference, so they wrote their own magic formula (pun intended).
They decided to bring in players they thought were hard-nosed defenders, but they also happened to be non-shooters: Rajon Rondo, Lance Stephenson, and Michael Beasley. They also got one new center in JaVale McGee to help Ivica Zubac defend the paint. Kentavious Caldwell-Pope was also re-signed.
Let’s try to make sense out of the way Magic Johnson and Rob Pelinka put together this current version of the Lakers.