Los Angeles Lakers general manager Rob Pelinka believes the team’s chemistry will benefit from bringing back some players from last season’s team.
The Los Angeles Lakers have had trouble getting back on track in recent years. They have missed the postseason in six consecutive seasons, the longest drought in franchise history. However, with an improved supporting cast and Anthony Davis added to LeBron James, things are looking up.
In recent years, the chemistry has been lacking on the court. Los Angeles has been signing players to one-year deals to retain cap flexibility in the future. It helped them eventually land James, but hurt the product on the court.
When you are constantly handing out one-year deals it is impossible to build any chemistry and cohesion. The roster was constantly turning over with new faces brought in on a yearly basis.
This year, they have a lot of new faces, eight right now and potentially a ninth if they are able to land Andre Iguodala. It will take some time to get acclimated to another alpha dog in Davis, but that isn’t something general manager Rob Pelinka is worried about.
Pelinka believes retaining Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, Rajon Rondo and JaVale McGee will lead to improved chemistry this season, with LeBron James, Kyle Kuzma and Alex Caruso being more holdovers.
"“I think chemistry is everything and you have to look at the whole picture,” Pelinka noted during a conference call. “It’s almost like the spokes on a wheel; you can’t just focus on one spoke and see that the wheel is going to work. The way that those players in particular fit with the other pieces makes sense. That’s just chemistry in sports.”"
While there are plenty of new faces on the team, these aren’t players that are complete strangers to each other. A lot of them have teamed up throughout their NBA careers already.
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Davis played with DeMarcus Cousins and Rondo with the New Orleans Pelicans. Davis and Cousins played with Cook during the 2016-17 season on the Pelicans. Cousins and Quinn Cook played with the Golden State Warriors last season, and Cook played with McGee on the Warriors during the 2017-18 season.
Those previous stops and relationship built will help this Lakers team get on the same page quicker. Playing alongside James isn’t the easiest thing, but having multiple guys on the roster that already know how it will go will help ease the transition of other guys.
It also helps that a lot of the new faces are role players. While the performance of guys such as Danny Green, Avery Bradley and Cousins is important, they should know their roles early on and have plenty of time adjusting to them as the season goes on.
Pelinka is correct in his assessment that retaining some guys will help in the chemistry department. That chemistry should continue building throughout the season and carry over as some of the free agents were signed to multi-year deals that run congruent to James’ deal.