Lakers: Mitch Kupchak has proven that Jim Buss was to blame for dry spell

After a nine-year drought and a six-year-long absence from the playoffs, the Los Angeles Lakers finally won the NBA Championship again last year, and they show signs of a good chance at repeating.

The renewed, sudden success is obviously due to a massive roster overhaul that occurred between 2018 and 2020.

Magic Johnson and Rob Pelinka are the most responsible for the quick turnaround of the purple and gold. They put in place a new culture and it is undeniable that Magic’s presence was the biggest catalyst to lure LeBron James in LA, setting the ground for a championship-caliber team and opening the way to a whole new class of players joining their ranks.

Although rarely receiving the deserved credit for bringing success and the championship back to LA, someone else is at the root of the new foundation that reinstated the Lakers’ past glory: Jeanie Buss. Everything started with her.

Jeanie made her voice felt in light of years of struggles and irrelevance, taking complete control of the franchise in 2016 and putting it on a new path of success. This meant facing her brother Jim, in charge of basketball operations through these disappointing years, and putting him on notice that his time as a Lakers executive was running short if he did not deliver consistent results in the short term.

So happened that Jim himself resigned in 2017, aware of the impossibility to turn around the situation, and paving the way for Magic Johnson, already a special advisor to Jeanie, to take control of the basketball side of the franchise.

An individual gets lost in this storm of events. That is the critical figure of Mitch Kupchak, former general manager, and assistant to the great Jerry West before that.

Kupchak was part of the Los Angeles Lakers’ front office since 1986 and GM since 2000. As part of that front office unable to deliver competitiveness in the previous five years, he got fired from the only franchise he had ever known as an executive (and almost in his entire basketball career, having played solely for the Washington Wizards before joining the Lakers).

Fortunately for him, a little bit more than a year later, he found another job, getting hired by fellow Tar Heel Michael Jordan as president of basketball operations and general manager of the Charlotte Hornets, probably one of the best decisions His Airness ever made in his NBA post-playing career.

Mitch has been proving all his value as an executive, turning the Hornets from a joke into a playoff team in the short run, despite inevitably losing in the process franchise player Kemba Walker.

Kemba’s departure was something unavoidable the newly appointed GM could not be held responsible for. Team struggles in the Walker era dated back way before his settlement. Impatience and dissatisfaction had grown strong in the All-Star point guard. Losing him was just part of the natural process.

Mitch Kupchak back at work post-Lakers

Things did not start the best way for Kupchak. In his first draft as a Hornets executive he decided to trade down just one position in order to acquire two more second-round picks from the Los Angeles Clippers, but doing so he ended up losing on promising guard Shai Gilgeous-Alexander in favor of forward Miles Bridges.

The Hornets would have better held onto the young point guard, and they also overlooked Michael Porter Jr., like most teams, because of the injury scare he brought with himself.

But we know the draft is not an exact science and it is hard to predict how things will play out (furthermore, Mitch could have made up for the mistake by drafting LaMelo Ball this year).

Nevertheless, two years later, the Hornets are a playoff team, holding tight at the fourth spot in the Eastern Conference until the injury bug bit them, as happened to the Lakers and many other teams in this condensed season.

Without resorting to the infamous tanking strategy, in a short time, Kupchak put together a competitive team able to make its way through the best teams in the East.

MORE: 5 things THT must improve to become an all-star

Did he overpay for it? Probably. But the Charlotte Hornets are not a big market team and do not have the appeal nor successful past of storied franchise like the Lakers and Celtics. The only way to lure some relevant free agents to North Carolina is to throw big money at them.

He signed Terry Rozier to a 3-year, $56.7 million contract and Gordon Hayward for $120 million in four seasons, but their additions are paying off, leading the Hornets to a rare good season. As mentioned, though, the plethora of injuries that have recently plagued them, losing LaMelo Ball, Gordon Hayward and Malik Monk, risks to seriously jeopardize their season.

It is a shame. In an ever-changing Eastern Conference environment, the Hornets had managed to position themselves in the conversation.

After the excellent decision of drafting Rookie of the Year candidate LaMelo Ball, Charlotte is a big man away from possibly becoming a low-tier contender.

With only Cody Zeller and Bismack Biyombo in the middle, they need to seriously upgrade their frontcourt. Among centers that play at least 20 minutes, Zeller is 31st in defensive rating with 111.7, per NBA.com. Biyombo stands at 24 with 110.5, and an even worse 112 (career-low for the second consecutive year) according to Basketball-Reference’s metrics.

As a consequence, the Hornets are the worst team in the NBA in opponent two-point field goal percentage, rank 18th in blocks per game, and 21st in dunks allowed. The closer we move to the basket, the higher percentage they allow, while being elite between 10 ft and the three-point line. No wonder they also rank 22nd in defensive rebounds and 27th in offensive rebounds allowed.

This huge imbalance between the paint and the arc is a clear sign of the lack of a strong defensive presence in the middle, someone capable of discouraging penetrations and contesting shots around the basket, but also indicative of how little they miss to be a very good team. A single player would make all the difference in the world.

Elite offensive centers have an easy life against the Hornets. In their meetings this year Bam Adebayo averaged 20 points and 8.5 rebounds. In 31 minutes per game, Karl-Anthony Towns scored 20.5 points and 11.5 rebounds over them, while Joel Embiid averaged 22.3 points and 12 rebounds in the same amount of time.

Nikola Vucevic was allowed to collect 25 points and 12.5 rebounds, and DeAndre Ayton did not find much opposition in maintaining his season averages unaltered in their only matchup (15 and 12). In a blowout win, Nikola Jokic had a triple-double in just 28 minutes (12-10-10) and an overwhelming +27 plus/minus, without attempting a three.

It is hard to believe that Kupchak did not address this glaring need for the Hornets. It is harder to acknowledge that he overlooked a valuable asset like Hassan Whiteside in the free-agent market, signed in extremis by the Sacramento Kings to a laughable price to play a minimal role in a team that had no need of him. And yet he manages to produce relatively big numbers (19.6 points, 14.6 rebounds and 3.3 blocks per 36 minutes).

Maybe the president of the Carolinian team did not expect the early rise of LaMelo Ball and the immediate success the team would experience. He was probably taking a cautious approach and determined to evaluate things with a more patient and farseeing look before making other additions, thus not risking rushing into moves that might end up useless or even damaging.

This summer he will certainly take care of the big man issue. Whiteside will be once again available along with other valuable options in the center department market.

Mitch Kupchak was actually powerless and a victim of the events with the Los Angeles Lakers

This early success in Charlotte should not come as a surprise. In Los Angeles, Mitch Kupchak built multiple contending and championship teams.

Fueling and re-tooling the roster set up by Jerry West to complete a three-peat in the Shaq-Kobe era.

• The four-Hall-of-Famers team in 2004
• The 2008-2010 finalists and two-time champions
• The vetoed Chris Paul trade
• The 2013 All-Star team

These are milestones in Lakers’ history that repeatedly proved Kupchak’s competence and how successful of an executive he was. For this reason, it comes easier to believe that the responsibility for the catastrophe of the second half of the 2010s falls on Jim Buss, at the time the executive vice president of basketball operations. The role he was promoted to in 2005 stepping over the man he had (allegedly) learned from!

The absurd, unacceptable contracts given to Timofey Mozgov and Luol Deng (a mistake the Lakers still pay today) sound more like a desperate act by a man who knows his time is running out and needs to somehow salvage his credibility straight away in order to extend his run.

Giving away those kinds of contracts without even acknowledging the availability of an amnesty clause in the new CBA looks even worse than a rookie mistake.

Obviously, as executive vice president and part-owner of the team, he had the final word on every subject and little could Kupchak do to prevent him from doing regrettable mistakes if he was decided to do them. Jim could literally overrule him.

Plus, the toxic environment and unsuccessful program developed under Jim Buss was keeping free agents away from LA.

We understand Jeanie needed to dismantle to the ground the old front office and have a clean slate in order to create a new culture from scratch. So she had to fire everybody from the old management and give Magic Johnson total control for a fresh start. A strong signal had to be sent around the NBA that things were changing in LA. A new sheriff was in town and he had nothing to do with the previous office.

Certainly, Kupchak was a casualty of this necessary renovation, unceremoniously fired after 30 years of loyal service, but his value should not be questioned, and his quick success in Charlotte proves how much the downfall of the Lakers was Jim Buss’s fault.