Los Angeles Lakers: Three words that describe the offseason

3. Resiliency

During the course of the last year, Rob Pelinka butchered the Lakers chances of winning a championship.

First, he stupidly created “Team Meme,” the loveable group of “playmakers” who were signed to help ease the burden on LeBron James and allow him to work out of the post. That plan failed.

Next, he put almost every Lakers player on the auction block before the trade deadline in an attempt to land AD from the Pelicans. That plan failed as well. The aftermath of the AD earthquake was a fractured Lakers locker room that torpedoed any chance the Purple and Gold had of making the playoffs.

As the Lakers regular season sputtered out like a child’s broken wind-up doll, the talking heads across all the major networks upped their ratings by continually criticizing Rob Pelinka.

Then, before the last game of the season, Magic Johnson gave an impromptu press conference where he quit. Making matters worse, he decided to follow along with the key sports broadcasters and he also vilified Rob Pelinka.

After that, Magic “I can’t shut my mouth” Johnson gave a one-on-one interview and shattered Rob Pelinka in half.

Then things got really crazy and all the guys on the biggest sports stations and websites (Baxter Holmes) doubled down on the Rob Pelinka hate, painting the picture of an imbecile running around the office like a caveman screaming incoherent sentences everywhere he went.

Then, one day a few weeks ago, Rob Pelinka quietly landed Anthony Davis in a good trade with the Pelicans.

After that, Rob Pelinka almost inked Kawhi Leonard, the best player in the world, even though everyone knew he didn’t want to play with LeBron James.

In the end, Kawhi Leonard joined the Clippers, because they offered the world to the Thunder so that they could trade for Paul George, SO THAT Kawhi would come to join LA’s other team. Rob Pelinka didn’t panic, though, as he calmly went to plan B.

Rob immediately signed Danny Green, JaVale McGee, Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, Quinn Cook, and Rajon Rondo. Then he made solid deals with Alex Caruso, DeMarcus Cousins, and Avery Bradley.

During the 2019 offseason, Rob Pelinka went from being the worst executive in the NBA to one of the best. In fact, you can make the argument that he along with the rest of the Lakers staff, had the best summer out of any front office in the association, including the Nets, Clippers, and  Warriors.

Pelinka’s most recent roster construction has been remarkable, but the thing that’s impressed me most about Rob over the last four months is that he took every media member’s best punch (that includes me) right on the jaw and he didn’t even grimace.

He kept coming to the office and grinding every day without saying anything negative about Magic Johnson and without shouting at the media in defense of himself.

Rob Pelinka has shown everyone that he’s not only a class act, but he’s the most resilient executive throughout the NBA.