The Los Angeles Lakers are both playing well this season and yet are not a true threat to win the title, given the presence of the Oklahoma City Thunder and Denver Nuggets. To find a way to build another championship team, NBA agent Rich Paul -- best known for his connection to LeBron James, whom he represents through Klutch Sports -- has a simple message: get back to a championship culture.
Paul debuted a new podcast show with Max Kellerman called "Game Over" which looks at teams across sports to provide incisive commentary. On their first episode, Paul unpacked the problem the Lakers are dealing with on an institutional level. They are, at their core, not a winning organization anymore.
Rich Paul points to Pat Riley, who coached the Lakers to four titles in the 1980s before moving on to instill a championship mindset in New York and Miami. The culture that Riley put in place was that no player was above the team; they were going to do things a certain way in pursuit of a championship, not in pursuit of making any one star feel special.
He also pushes back on the idea that, as a player agent, he wants his star players to have preferential treatment. His job is to maximize the money -- for LeBron James, for anyone -- and then he wants the team to lean on his players to become the best versions of themselves. If they miss a rotation, Paul wants the team to call his clients out.
By implication, he doesn't seem to think the Lakers are doing that with their collection of stars. The reporting out of Los Angeles has been that the Lakers are now doing Luka's bidding in building out the roster. They pursued Deandre Ayton and Marcus Smart according to his vision of the team.
On the one hand, it's only natural for them to build around their best player -- and for all that LeBron has done an amazing job of staving off Father Time, Doncic is now the team's best player. Adding defenders and centers only makes sense to maximize Doncic's impact on the court.
Yet on the other, as Paul is holding up, the organization cannot become the servant of the star. That is dangerous in any organization -- just ask the crosstown Los Angeles Clippers what can come of banding over backwards to mollify a star player.
Yet how insane is it for the Lakers, as Paul points out, the franchise with a mountain of championships and a legacy of winning, to merely do the bidding of their star players? And yet they appear to be doing just that in how they build the roster -- although that is hardly something new.
The Lakers have ignored this lesson for years
Rich Paul may be acting like the Lakers have suddenly pivoted away from that culture, but the reality is that they did so years before -- to do the bidding of LeBron James. Whether it was Rich Paul pulling the lever or LeBron, they pushed the Lakers to take a championship team and break it into pieces. The worst offense was the LeBron-sanctioned trade to bring Russell Westbrook to the team, a move that slammed the door shut on another title run.
Paul is right; the Lakers should not be capitulating to any star player. They are the Lakers, and they have proven an ability to take star players, build the right teams around them, and compete for and win championships. They have done that decade after decade. Yet that sort of culture shift has to happen at the top, and it's not apparent that Rob Pelinka, a former player agent himself, knows how to do that.
JJ Redick looks like the man for the job, and he will need to navigate the difficult balance between empowering Doncic and not coddling him. Yet for the organization as a whole to re-adopt this championship culture that Paul is talking about, they will need to make difficult decisions about who is running the show. Perhaps that means replacing Pelinka; perhaps that means adding another voice to the room.
Pat Riley is not walking through that door. Phil Jackson is not walking through that door. Kobe Bryant, RIP, is not around to carry that culture forward. The Lakers need to find a way to put it in place, or they will not be winning another title -- with Luka or with anyone.
Rich Paul is right, and a hypocrite. That makes his advice a difficult pill for the Lakers to swallow -- but that doesn't mean it's not the best medicine for the job.