Los Angeles Lakers: 3 rules the front office must follow this offseason
1. Build Around the Young Core
LeBron James is a physical marvel, but he was drafted over a decade and a half ago in 2003 as the No. 1 pick.
Here’s a list of the top 20 draft picks from 2003 and what they are doing now:
- LeBron James
- Darko Milicic (retired)
- Carmelo Anthony (out of the league)
- Chris Bosh (retired)
- Dwayne Wade (retired)
- Chris Kaman (retired)
- Kirk Hinrich (retired)
- T.J. Ford (retired)
- Mike Sweetney (retired)
- Jarvis Hayes (retired)
- Mickael Pietrus (retired)
- Nick Collison (retired)
- Marcus Banks (retired)
- Luke Ridnour (retired)
- Reece Gaines (retired)
- Troy Bell (retired)
- Zarko Cabarkapa (retired)
- David West (retired)
- Sasha Pavlovic (retired)
- Dahntay Jones (retired)
Every one of the players listed above is out of the league, which shows that LeBron’s diet and workout regime have allowed him to stay in incredible physical shape.
The fact that LeBron James is still a top-10 player in the NBA when all of his peers are retired is a minor miracle, but when you take into account the fact that he’s played over 46,000 regular season minutes to go along with more than 10,000 playoff minutes, LeBron James seems like he actually has supernatural powers.
Even if LeBron James is a superhero by night, he still played WAY too many minutes last year (35.2 MPG.), which is completely unsustainable.
If the Lakers front office builds a roster with LeBron as the focal point in the same way as 2018-2019, and he’s forced to play over 35 minutes per contest next year, then they are essentially begging for LeBron to suffer a major injury.
The Lakers have to be cautious with LeBron going forward. That means he shouldn’t play in back-to-back games, he shouldn’t play more than 27 minutes per game, and he shouldn’t be the only player in charge of the Lakers half-court offense.
Luckily for the Lakers front office, they have a great young core that they can lean on. The Lakers front office definitely should not trade Lonzo Ball, Brandon Ingram, and Kyle Kuzma over the summer. They are all young, talented, and hardworking. They are the foundation of the Lakers.
Rob Pelinka needs to sign players who mesh well with not just LeBron, but players who can also play with Ball, Ingram, and Kuzma.
There’s also been a lot of talk about how the Lakers should trade their No. 4 pick for an experienced player, but dealing the No. 4 pick would be a huge mistake.
Almost every mock draft has the Lakers taking De’Andre Hunter. Don’t sleep on him.
He shot over 44% from beyond the arc last year and he also shot 78% from the charity stripe in his final year at Virginia (a high free throw percentage is often a great indicator of a college basketball players ability to shoot well in the NBA).
De’Andre Hunter is 6’7″, with a 7’2″ reach, which allowed him to be a disruptive force on defense, capable of shutting down guards on the perimeter and bigs down low.
Hunter possesses two skills – outside shooting and defense – that the Lakers desperately need. It would be very narrow-sighted of the Lakers front office to trade the rights to a young player with as much potential as De’Andre Hunter unless they get a great return for him.
Instead, Rob Pelinka should draft Hunter and allow him to become the newest member of the Lakers young core.