Kentavious Caldwell-Pope says the quiet part out loud about the Lakers
By Jason Reed
The Los Angeles Lakers have had ups and down this season but ultimately have not had the level of success that they were expecting to have. Meanwhile, there are several former Lakers throughout the league that are blossoming on their teams ranging from the likes of Kyle Kuzma to lesser players like Stanley Johnson.
One of the former Lakers who are blossoming is Kentavious Caldwell-Pope. Not only is KCP on arguably the best team in the Western Conference in the Denver Nuggets but he has been a big contributor to the team’s success this season.
KCP is taking advantage of having Nikola Jokic as a teammate and is shooting 47.4% from beyond the arc in 4.4 attempts per game. For a Los Angeles team that really needs three-point shooting, this cuts a bit deeper.
Twisting the knife in that cut is KCP’s latest comments during his appearance on ‘The Lowe Post’ podcast. Caldwell-Pope broke down the Lakers’ decision to pivot so quickly from the 2020 championship team and you can hear every Lakers fan listening nodding in unison.
"“I don’t think they should have broke the team up, the championship team […] I feel like they took a lot of their core pieces and broke them up, and the core pieces held everything together as far as that championship team […] I feel like they rushed trying to do something new.”"
Kentavious Caldwell-Pope is 100% right about the Los Angeles Lakers.
When you go back and really dive into what Los Angeles did with the roster it is quite mind-boggling. After winning the championship in 2020, Rob Pelinka went out and made some moves that seemed really savvy at the time. Sure, there were some misses such as Marc Gasol, but the 2020-21 team was arguably more talented than the previous iteration.
The team just ran into bad injury luck. It happens. They were up 2-1 on a Phoenix Suns team that was two games from winning the NBA Finals. Not only were the Lakers up 2-1, but they were also dominating that series. Then Anthony Davis got hurt.
So what happened? The front office panicked, overreacted from a bad injury luck and felt like it had to make a pivot and make a big trade. That big trade was the Russell Westbrook trade, which Kentavious Caldwell-Pope was involved in.
And the results have spoken for themselves since. As sad as it is, the Lakers would still be one of the most dominant teams in the league if they didn’t make sweeping changes, kept the core intact, and added smaller role players around said core.
Imagine this year’s team with LeBron James and Anthony Davis if they had the likes of KCP, Kuzma and Alex Caruso on the roster. Those three alone would make a massive difference, let alone the other former players who never should have left LA.
At least KCP gets to compete for a championship this season with a Denver Nuggets franchise that has never won the Larry O’Brien Trophy. That might give Lakers fans something to root for in the NBA Playoffs this year.