Los Angeles Lakers need to fire Rob Pelinka to be successful

With a lot of change happening for the Los Angeles Lakers, they should be moving on from Rob Pelinka as well.

The Los Angeles Lakers have something of a leadership vacuum right now. Magic Johnson stepped down as President of Basketball Operations, and shortly afterwards Luke Walton was out as head coach. The one man remaining from that regime is Rob Pelinka, and that seems problematic

This is nothing personally against Lakers general manager Rob Pelinka. In interviews he seems like a decent guy, and he definitely seems like a really smart and shrewd man. As we remember, he rose to prominence back in the day as Kobe Bryant’s agent starting in the early 2000s when he fired Arn Tellem, and according to Roland Lazenby in his book “Showboat,” Bryant went with Pelinka because he was impressed with his shrewdness.

Well, maybe that shrewdness allowed him to become successful at his craft and build a comfortable living for himself and his family, but it seems to have become a problem for his current employer, the once-great Los Angeles Lakers.

In his two years as their general manager, Rob has made a couple of good moves, like trading non-producing rookie Svi Mykhailiuk for three-point sniper Reggie Bullock. Of course, he’s also made some questionable or bad moves, like trading Ivica Zubac for Mike Muscala, as well as letting Julius Randle go last summer.

Given the time, and especially given his shrewdness, his number crunching skills and his apparent knowledge of the game stemming from his time as a three point specialist on Michigan’s great teams in the late 80s and early 90s, perhaps Pelinka could develop into a solid GM.

However, there seems to be a huge problem with Kobe’s former agent, at least according to reports.

On a recent episode of ESPN’s First Take, Stephen A Smith, while making it clear that he liked Pelinka and had no beef with him personally, gave a not-so-positive assessment of Pelinka’s reputation among other executives and front office people around the Association:

"There are people in the league who despise him to the point where I can’t even throw aside the word hate.They don’t talk about him glowingly, they have a real problem with him, they don’t like him. In some instances, they’ve been highly reluctant to take his phone calls, which is why Magic had to be involved in terms of being on the phone, particularly when it came to the issue involving Anthony Davis and the Pelicans."

I know some of you really dislike Stephen A Smith and feel like he’s nothing but hot air, but he’s not the only one saying this.

According to 247Sports.com, Brad Turner from the Los Angeles Times recently talked to people around the NBA, including agents and GMs, and they echoed Smith’s sentiment about Pelinka.

One agent said the following:

"I just don’t see how they do anything going forward with Rob in place. No one trusts him.Honestly, they need to hire an experienced general manager with credibility and let him fire Rob. Let that president that come in, let him have the authority to hire his staff and to hire their head coach if he doesn’t want Luke Walton."

There was also a GM who said something far more strident:

"This is how I would describe Rob Pelinka to Jeanie [Buss]. He was Rich Paul when Rob had Kobe. That’s the only way to explain it to her so she can get it a little bit better."

To give you some context to that quote, when the Anthony Davis stuff broke out at mid-season, Jeanie Buss was angry at the media for publicly reporting on the Lakers’ attempts to acquire him and the fact that LeBron’s posse, ahem I mean the Lakers’ front office was apparently willing to trade almost the whole team to get Davis. She was so peeved that she even used President Donald Trump’s favorite phrase to describe the media’s coverage of the team’s pursuit of Davis: “fake news.”

It got so bad that for a New York minute, Buss even ruminated about trading Lebron James because she was mad at Rich Paul for supposedly creating the whole mess. Luckily, Buss called Paul and the two patched things up.

It doesn’t matter how great you are, if other GMs or executives loathe you to the point where they aren’t willing to do business with you or even take your phone calls, you’ve got a real problem.

It seems like the league’s distrust or even hate of Pelinka goes back a long time. You may remember that in 2004, Carlos Boozer, then a second-year player with Cleveland, agreed in principle to a long-term deal to stay in the Mistake By The Lake, only to flake on that agreement and join the Utah Jazz. Pelinka, who was Boozer’s agent, got the Cavs to decline using their team option on him so that he could then sign a new, longer contract with them.

There seems to be a general sense of mistrust by executives in pro sports towards agents, but an act like that can tarnish a particular agent’ reputation for many years, maybe forever.

We all know that the Lakers’ hopes of winning a world championship soon while LeBron is still an elite player may rest on trading for Anthony Davis, or for that matter, Bradley Beal, since the odds seem to be against them landing a top-tier star via free agency this summer. If David Griffin, the new executive vice president of basketball operations in New Orleans won’t pick up the phone when Pelinka calls him up, the Lakers’ chances of getting AD this summer will be, as Chuck would’ve said, slim to none, and slim has left town.

In theory, maybe Pelinka could remain with the Lakers in some kind of role behind the scenes, given his intelligence and knowledge of the game and the business behind the game. But after two years as GM, would he accept a lesser role?

Whether Pelinka gets reassigned or kicked out of the organization altogether, the Lakers need and deserve an executive who not only has the skills and acumen to get the job done now, but one who also has the respect of the rest of the league. If you haven’t noticed, the Lakers once-great luster and prestige has taken a huge, huge hit around the NBA in recent years, and they need to restore that ASAP if they are to hoist another Larry O’Brien trophy any time soon.