Los Angeles Lakers: 5 minimum signings that would’ve been perfect in LA
By Jason Reed
1. Blake Griffin
The ceiling of Victor Oladipo might be higher but Blake Griffin still has a fairly high ceiling himself. Sure, he has run into injuries like Oladipo and that hurts their chances of reaching said ceiling, but the best season of Griffin’s career was arguably the 2018-19 season so he is not removed from greatness.
The ceiling is not the only reason why Griffin ranks no. 1 on this list (and no, it has nothing to do with the fact that he is helping the biggest threat to the Lakers, the Brooklyn Nets). It all has to do with the position that Griffin plays.
As mentioned when touching on Bjelica, the Lakers can use depth at the power forward position. The Lakers really don’t have a true four outside of Anthony Davis and with Russell Westbrook in town (as well as the potential for Marc Gasol to struggle), Davis is going to be playing a lot more five.
That leaves situations in which the Lakers do not want to sacrifice too much size or do not want to give Carmelo Anthony the defensive burden of playing the four against a bigger team. Another power forward would fix that problem and Griffin would be overqualified.
He would leapfrog the likes of Trevor Ariza in the rotation and get more minutes and he would have been a very good addition to the Los Angeles Lakers’ bench. Instead, he too is another what-if.
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The hope is that the Los Angeles Lakers win the NBA Championships and none of this really matters. The worst-case scenario is losing a playoff series and there being a scenario in which one of these five players would have been very useful.