Lakers blindly rewarding Rob Pelinka should outrage fans
By Jason Reed
Rob Pelinka will be calling the shots for the Los Angeles Lakers for another four years. The vice president of basketball operations signed a contract extension with the organization that carries him through 2026, which is the same length of contract as new head coach Darvin Ham.
This might not be a surprise for most Lakers fans considering Pelinka won a championship two calendar years ago. Pelinka also has a great relationship with Jeanie Buss, who has proven in the past that personal relationships are enough to stick around in the organization (looking at you, Kurt Rambis).
All that being said, Buss rewarding Pelinka should concern Lakers fans about how the organization will be run moving forward. Sure, Pelinka helped bring a championship to Los Angeles but nothing he did led to that title. In fact, there is plenty more to criticize Pelinka about than there is to praise.
Rob Pelinka does not deserve an extension from the Los Angeles Lakers.
Let’s be honest, LeBron James brought a championship to Los Angeles, not Rob Pelinka. LeBron chose to take his talents to Los Angeles for outside-of-basketball reasons. Not only is Los Angeles the best place for LeBron to grow his brand and make Space Jam 2, but at the time, they had assets to move to make him happy.
None of those assets were because of Pelinka. Los Angeles didn’t trade for Anthony Davis because of Pelinka. The Lakers traded for AD because he signed with Klutch Sports and essentially forced his way to the team.
LeBron traded for Anthony Davis.
The results were fantastic. The team had a good enough supporting cast to win one of the most difficult NBA titles in league history. It was not meant to be the top of the mountain in just the first year of this duo, but thus far, it has been.
Everything that has happened since should concern Lakers fans. Rob Pelinka took a contending team and managed to make it worse the following year, even worse the year after that, and who knows, the 2022-23 season could be the worst of it all.
Sure, there are things like injuries that are out of Pelinka’s control but it is impossible to justify most of the moves he has made since winning that championship. The team traded one of its best three-and-D wings (and a first-round pick!!!) for Dennis Schroder, who was someone that had very little trade value at the time.
Pelinka then tried to sign Schroder to a big contract, which Schroder rejected. Not even two years later and Schroder is a minimum contract guy.
He traded assets to make room for Marc Gasol, which didn’t work, and then had to trade assets to get rid of him. He chose Talen Horton-Tucker over Alex Caruso after refusing to trade THT for Kyle Lowry. And most of all, he traded actual NBA assets for Russell Westbrook when no other team in the league wanted him.
LeBron James handed the Los Angeles Lakers a championship window when he decided he wanted to come play in Los Angeles. And even though the team did win a title, this window has been extremely underwhelming otherwise.
LA has zero playoff series wins outside of the 2019-20 season. That is unacceptable in four years of LeBron James.