The Los Angeles Lakers are not off to a great start and it is a bit disheartening. While there is plenty of time for the team to right the ship, the Lakers were perceived to be the bonafide title favorites in the Western Conference and they have not played like that thus far this season.
To be fair, the team has been battling with injuries that have impacted the play. LA has played more without LeBron James than with him and the rotation has missed several key pieces for most of the season.
Those pieces are returning to action and that helps the depth of the team but it also doesn’t help that not every player is playing up to par. Russell Westbrook has been the top example as he has played really poorly this season but there are role players, such as Kent Bazemore, who have not played well, either.
Hindsight is 20/20, and with hindsight, the Los Angeles Lakers will regret not signing certain free agents.
The Lakers were restricted to only signing players for the minimum because of the Westbrook deal and while that did limit the possible options, there still were veteran-minimum free agents that the Lakers could have afforded and would have worked nicely in LA.
Let’s dive into the three veteran free agents that Rob Pelinka should be kicking himself over for missing out on.
1. Nemanja Bjelica
Back in the offseason, I argued that the Los Angeles Lakers should have signed Nemanja Bjelica over other players that they ended up signing, such as Kent Bazemore. I caught flack for that as Bjelica was coming off of a down year and Bazemore was coming off of a positive year.
Well, both players have returned to be who we thought they were before last season with Bjelica playing a solid role off the bench for the Western Conference-leading Golden State Warriors while Bazemore has played himself into less playing time.
They would have different roles on the Lakers but I would much rather have Bjelica over Bazemore. Heck, the team probably should have brought in Bjelica to give the team a stretch five off the bench and just rolled with Dwight Howard instead of bringing in DeAndre Jordan.
Bjelica does not sacrifice any size at the center position and while he is not a great rebounder that does not matter in today’s game with smaller lineups than it did before. Bjelica also would have fit nicely alongside Anthony Davis, who would have been listed as the four with Bjelica on the court but would have handled a lot of the true center duties.
As he should be doing anyway.
Bjelica is shooting a crisp 46.7% from beyond the arc this season while averaging 6.8 points, 4.4 rebounds and 1.8 assists per game in only 15.1 minutes per game. He is definitely having a larger impact in his 15 minutes per game than Jordan is in his 14 minutes per game. Bjelica has a 2.6 Box Plus/Minus this season while Jordan has a 0.7 BPM.
2. Otto Porter
This is the second Golden State Warriors signing on this list as the Warriors brought in Otto Porter on a minimum contract in the offseason. Porter was another player that I personally wanted to see the Lakers bring in as he was a perfect cheap value signing to add shooting and decent defense.
Porter became extremely underrated in the NBA because his contract was so terrible. We saw the same thing with Nicolas Batum on the Los Angeles Clippers. Batum was the most overpaid player in the league in Charlotte and many took the fact that he was overpaid and undervalued him as a player. Batum showed in LA that he is still a great role player.
The same could be said about Otto Porter, who is still young and has a lot of potential to be an impact role player. Porter isn’t playing a huge number of minutes with the Warriors this season but he has been great in the minutes that he has played.
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Porter is averaging 6.5 points, 4.3 rebounds, 1.2 assists and 0.9 steals in only 16.8 minutes per game. Porter too has been red-hot from beyond the arc, shooting 43.6% from beyond the arc.
Some might think that this is just the Warriors bump for both Porter and Bjelica but both players were great three-point shooters before joining Golden State. They both were just in terrible situations and playing on a good team can re-ignite someone. That was the entire reason to bring them in.
Porter has been solid defensively as well. Porter ranks 27th in the league (min. 200 minutes) in NBA Math’s Defensive Points Saved metric. While 27th might not sound all that impressive, there are 221 players who have played 200 minutes this season. That puts him in the 87th percentile while also being higher than any Laker.
Sounds pretty great for a role player.
3. Svi Mykhailiuk
The Los Angeles Lakers had a chance to sign Svi Mykhailiuk late in the offseason. Mykhailiuk was on the market for awhile and ultimately signed with the Toronto Raptors and has been a pretty good bench wing for the team.
If there is one thing that this team is one or two pieces short of it is wings. At surprisingly good as Avery Bradley has been this season, I would have much rather seen the team use that roster spot on Mykhailiuk than Bradley. Albeit, the situations are different with Bradley being on a non-guaranteed contract.
The Lakers obviously saw something in Mykhailiuk when they drafted him and as we have seen with so many players (Alex Caruso, Austin Reaves, Talen Horton-Tucker, etc.) if the Lakers see something in you then you are probably going to be special.
The Lakers traded Mykhailiuk for Reggie Bullock back in LeBron’s first season with the team as the Lakers were trading a future shooting asset in Mykhailiuk for a current (back then) shooting asset in Bullock.
It is now the future and Mykhailiuk has proven to be a solid rotation player. He is shooting 39% from beyond the arc this season and is averaging 7.8 points, 2.8 rebounds and 1.1 assists per game.
He is a great off-ball shooter to stick in the corner and while he is not someone who is going to D up the team’s best wing, he is someone who can at least hold his own defensively and does not present a matchup nightmare if they switch onto him.