Lakers Rumors: Rob Pelinka, Larry Nance Jr. trade story not true

Rob Pelinka, the general manager of the Los Angeles Lakers and a former agent, supposedly made a promise to former Laker Larry Nance Jr. that he broke shortly afterward. I recent Lakers rumors are to be believed, that story isn’t true.

There have been a ton of Los Angeles Lakers rumors recently involving the team’s front office. Rob Pelinka has come under fire lately, as has much of the Lakers front office after their disastrous season.

For one, he’s been criticized for making questionable or even flat-out bad trades and personnel decisions during his two years and two months as the team’s general manager.

But, according to recent reports, he’s also getting criticized because other GMs and executives around the league simply don’t like him. Actually, to say that they “don’t like” him is being kind.

ESPN’s Stephen A Smith has said that people around the league “despise” Pelinka and an agent who Brad Turner of the Los Angeles Times interviewed said that “no one trusts him.”

This can be traced back to a few incidents. There was one all the way back in 2004 when Pelinka was a young agent who got a great head start by representing Kobe Bryant.

Pelinka told the Cleveland Cavaliers to decline using their team option on Carlos Boozer, another player he represented so that he could sign a long-term contract with them. Boozer verbally agreed to one during the league moratorium period, only to flake and actually join the Utah Jazz.

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Well, now there’s a report that a year ago, Larry Nance Jr., then a Laker, and his fiancée wanted to buy a house, and Nance wanted to make sure the Lakers wanted to keep him around, so he went to Pelinka.

According to The Athletic’s Bill Oram, Pelinka told Nance that he’d only trade him if he were getting back one of the three best players in the game. Instead, soon after, on February 8, Nance and Jordan Clarkson were sent packing to Cleveland in return for Isaiah Thomas and some cap relief.

Thomas, at the time, was coming off of a torn labrum he sustained the previous season. Before the injury, Thomas was a very good player, but no basketball fan in their right mind could say he was ever a top three player, let alone in 2018 when he averaged 15.2 points a game on 37.3 percent shooting.

Nance, however, has come to the defense of Pelinka. Recently, he sent this out on his Twitter account.

Whether Nance is being straight up about this or is simply looking to diffuse some of the heat Pelinka has been getting is anyone’s guess. It’s a nice gesture, though.