2016-2017 Season
After two years as head coach, the Lakers fired Byron Scott and decided to bring in yet another former Laker to lead the team — Luke Walton. Many saw the hiring of Walton as a step in the right direction for the franchise, and he was seen as the perfect coach to lead this young and talented roster.
Speaking of which, with a majority of their roster under rookie-scaled contracts for years to come, as well as Kobe Bryant’s large salary off the books, the Lakers had a large amount of cap space going into the 2016 off-season.
With all of this extra money to spend, the Lakers shocked the entire league by signing Cavaliers center Timofey Mozgov to a 4-year/$64 million contract as soon as the free agency moratorium was lifted. They also signed Miami Heat forward Luol Deng to an even larger deal at 4-years/$72 million. In an instant, almost all of the Lakers’ cap-space was gone on two below-average players.
It didn’t take long for tensions to boil over about the state of the franchise, and after the team got out to yet another bad start, owner Jeanie Buss decided enough was enough. In February of 2017, Buss removed longtime general manager Mitch Kupchak, and executive VP of basketball operations Jim Buss from their positions.
She then named Magic Johnson as President of Basketball Operations, as well as longtime agent of Kobe Bryant, Rob Pelinka as General Manager.
Under a new coach that didn’t actively try to bench him at every turn, D’Angelo Russell had a productive season, averaging 15.6 points, 3.5 rebounds, and 4.8 assists. Unfortunately, Julius Randle didn’t have that same kind of luck, as he found himself in Luke’s dog-house throughout the season, constantly shifting from starting and coming off the bench.
No. 2 overall pick Brandon Ingram struggled in his rookie campaign, as he had a hard time adjusting to the physicality of the NBA, and ended the season with averages of 9.4 points, 4.0 rebounds and 2.1 assists.
The team finished with a 26-56 record, good for last place in the Pacific Division and 14th overall in the Western Conference. Also, for the third straight year, the Lakers didn’t own their first-round pick, and once again, had to land in the top-3 to keep it.
However, the basketball gods were kind to the Lakers, as the team had the 4th best lottery odds, but managed to land the 2nd pick in the draft lottery, enabling the team to draft UCLA point guard and Chino Hills native, Lonzo Ball.
Also, in the first of many efforts to undo the cap-damage of the Mozgov and Deng signings, the team packaged Mozgov with D’Angelo Russell in a salary dump with the Brooklyn Nets that netted the team Brook Lopez and the 27th pick in the 2017 draft, which wound up being Kyle Kuzma.