The Lakers‘ front office is internally blaming pressure from Klutch Sports Group for last summer’s acquisition of Russell Westbrook, multiple sources tell Eric Pincus of Bleacher Report.
As has been reported by several outlets since last August, Klutch clients LeBron James and Anthony Davis played a part in recruiting Westbrook, helping convince the Lakers to go after the former MVP instead of trying to sign-and-trade for DeMar DeRozan or acquire Buddy Hield from Sacramento.
Still, while James, Davis, and their agency may have had a hand in the Westbrook trade, VP of basketball operations Rob Pelinka and the rest of the Lakers’ front office ultimately had the final say. Pincus, who suggests that assigning the blame to Klutch Sports “may be an epic level of passing the buck,” writes that NBA front offices should consider their stars’ input but that the top basketball executives are responsible for making the decisions they feel are best for the team.
Here’s more on the Lakers:
- While retirement is a possibility, most people around the NBA expect Carmelo Anthony to play for at least one more season, according to Sean Deveney of Heavy.com, who spoke to multiple league executives about Anthony’s upcoming free agency. Deveney gets the sense that a return to the Lakers is the most likely outcome, but his sources mentioned the Nets, Heat, and Celtics as other potential landing spots.
- In a pair of stories for The Athletic, Jovan Buha hands out grades for all of the Lakers’ players this season and explores which players should – and shouldn’t – be back for 2022/23. Buha identifies Austin Reaves, Stanley Johnson, and Wenyen Gabriel as the non-stars who should return, and suggests the team shouldn’t retain Westbrook, Avery Bradley, Wayne Ellington, or Kent Bazemore.
- Buha also published a two-part mailbag at The Athletic, discussing the Lakers’ head coaching search, possible mid-level free agent targets, potential Westbrook trade scenarios, and whether it makes sense for the club to trade its 2027 and 2029 first-rounders.
Everyone knows the obvious that Lebron pushed for the lakers to do the Westbrook trade. Watch Lebron try to push for a bunch of players after the season is over. I have a feeling he will push for GP2.
This is all Klutch and LeBron. Agree that a GM should have final say, but going against Rich Paul & James would have opened up another Pandora’s box of issues. Glad to see Klutch finally get somewhat called out for all the fiascos they created in the NBA last year. Rich Paul has his fingerprints on the dynamics surrounding Simmons, John Wall, and the Lakers. Overplayed his hand on each of them.
@Cursed
I seriously doubt that LBJ is making ultimatums to anybody. it’s not in his character. In his own career he’s never demanded a trade or threatened to sit out. Unlike he did with Cleveland, he didn’t sign year to year deals. he signed a 4 year deal without early opt outs. LBJ wanted Kidd or Lue as coach. They said no. he wanted Westbrook and they said yes. Having a unhappy employee is one thing. Saying he’s running the organization is overboard.
LOL. You guys are so naive!
LeBron isn’t going to make explicit demands, but one doesn’t need to in order to get their point across. It’s the same as Trump telling Comey “I hope you can let this go”. You don’t incriminate yourself by being explicit, but the intent would be crystal clear.
Everyone knows the power that LeBron wields and, more importantly, that includes himself. So when he says he wants something, he absolutely realizes what kind of impact that’s going to have on a front office, particularly when he would be adamant about his requests.
You can say they can go against him all they want, but the reality is they feel extremely compelled to do so. It’s like saying it’s should be easy for a woman to say no to a powerful person in the company when they would pressure her to engage in certain acts, all the while knowing there could be retaliation involved. And LeBron is by far the most powerful person in the game, and one of the most powerful in the NBA as a whole second only, perhaps, to Silver himself. Even someone like AD doesn’t sniff that level of influence.
It’s just extremely hard for me to believe that the Lakers—or any team in the NBA—could have been stupid enough to bring a player like Westbrook into one of the worst fitting rosters imaginable. I don’t think even the Kings would be that incompetent. And it’s no secret that LeBron didn’t just ask for Westbrook to be acquired, but pushed hard for it to happen along with Rich Paul (who is powerful in his own right).
Finally, it’s important to realize who was in the Lakers front office at the time. It’s not like you had Ainge or Buford running the show, who might have enough clout to counter that influence given their long-term history of success. Pelinka was never going to be on equal footing with them.
Anyone with any corporate experience can you tell you that the Klutch angle here is entirely feasible even if LeBron & co can truthfully say, “We never explicitly asked for anything.”
That’s not organizations work, generally. Things are implied by the people with the most leverage; subsequent things happen.
Pelinka had no leverage last summer, really. Klutch, on the other hand, one year removed from a ring, had quite a bit.
So if Pelinka got the nod that if Russ wasn’t coming in then LeBron and AD might not be long for LA then I’m not sure “the final decision” was with him.
After this disaster, however, one could argue LeBron & co have less leverage.
And my guess is LA is looking at that and saying, “There’s no path for us to contend next year, then LeBron is 40,” and is going to continue to leak things like this as opposed to, like, being bullied into attaching their last remaining future assets to Russ to get John Wall.
Agree with everything except having “no path to contend next year” Of course there’s a path, the FO just needs to find it and proceed. They gave Lebron, AD and Klutch all they wanted this past season and it blew up in their faces, prime time blew it. Klutch now has multiple messes on their hands. Lebron’s promising he’ll never miss the play offs again. Surely feeling some sense of guilt for the season. So Let’s consider it a gift for winning in 2020 the year of Kobe’s passing. And moving forward the organization regains control and ultimately (hopefully) better decisions are made.
Contend, maybe. But it seems unlikely that they could maneuver themselves into being a legitimate championship contender at this point.
Funny that I made a very similar comment before reading yours. 100% agree.
Past is past
Trade Westbrook now
Luxury tax trade away
Top players wanting their choices isn’t new however the front office not excepting blame is an issue. Pelinka and Kupchak had all the power to refuse but chose not to. Thought it would be a win win for them If Lakers won; a win, if they lose; put the blame on LBJ, AD shoulders; still a win. It was obvious the chaos was from the front office….
There’s a chance the Lakers won’t have the option of trading Westbrook. He does have a player option. 47 million is a lot to leave on the table but he is headstrong. Westbrook may opt out in hopes of getting a deal in the neighborhood of 3/60 million on a team he wants to play for.
Zero chance Westbrook gets multiple years at 20 million on open market. He’d be offered veterans mid level exception.
LoL to that contract.
“a team he wants to play for” ???? this situation is thi opposite, is there any team that would want him to play? IMO, because of his stuborness he is just a contract for salay dump that will not play again. Unless he changes his attitude and be willing to play as a 2nd unit player he will be out.
Some people have short memories. Sure L.A. was a bad fit. I always thought it would be. You can’t take the ball out of Lebron’s hands and Westbrook can’t play off ball. Last season through sheer stubbornness he willed the Wiz to a playoff berth.
Flank Westbrook with 3 decent shooters and a finisher and barring injury he’ll get you somewhere between 43 and 48 wins.
SMH nobody is paying a old player that much money. Lakers could buy him out but that would cost them around $35 million. Most sport writers predict if he gets bought out he will get between $12 and $15 million a season on a 1 year deal. His attitude about coming off the bench and bashing Vogel will make some teams hesitant on offering him a deal.
RW can’t defend at all, always was a bad, at best subpar defender, but right now its awful and he is not producing enough on offense to justify him playing more than 6th/7th man of the rotation.
Those days are over for him, his mindset is the worst part. Blaming others all the time and not taking any blame on him. It’s not about short memory, its about his playstyle and attitude. He was the worst, before Randle, shooter in the entire league.
He is not interested in defense
Only people with shorter memories than internet posters are NBA GMs.
Russ played great the second half of the season in WAS, but he was horrendous to start. He was also terrible the second half of his Houston year. And he was terrible all year in LA.
He’s in his mid 30s – I think the safest bet is that the decline is real, and the Washington stretch was the aberration. Don’t see him opting out
Jeanie needs to speak. She’s the team’s governor, and in NBA circles that means she’s the only one with final say or any other status to make team decisions. It was HER NAME on the trade application. Of course, she didn’t decide the basketball merits of the deal (at least directly), but, even more certainly, she decided who did.
All fans like fairytales, probably LAL fans more than most, but nobody paying attention can believe for a minute that Jeanie appropriately appointed and empowered Pelinka as the team’s basketball decision maker (its inherently singular). Absent that, he’s just another of her advisors. Along with her best friend, her best friend’s husband, her boyfriend, her childhood hero, and likely others who frequently attend her dinner parties. But not, interestingly, the former Laker who has actually built championship teams; he’s persona non grata because, after all, he was once mean to her boyfriend.