The Los Angeles Lakers came into this summer with a clear need to upgrade their roster after another year in the Play-In and another playoff exit at the hands of the Denver Nuggets.
However, the decisions of a summer ago have come back to haunt them, and through three weeks of the NBA offseason, with the free agent pool dried up and the trade market at a standstill, this Lakers roster is worse than they were at this point a year ago. The optimistic viewpoint is that they will get better health than they did last season, as Gabe Vincent and Jarred Vanderbilt, two of their bigger signings, played a combined total of 40 games. The flip side of that coin, of course, is they got the healthiest combined season from their top stars since they’ve been together in L.A., as LeBron James and Anthony Davis appeared in 147 of a possible 164 games.
As of now, the Lakers have not made a single move of substance that will upgrade their regular rotation since Draft night when they selected Dalton Knecht in the first round (which, to be clear, was a terrific value selection at 17). Their lone signing was bringing back Max Christie on a 4-year, $32 million deal after he appeared in 67 games last year and averaged 4.2 points. In the meantime, they’ve seen Taurean Prince and Spencer Dinwiddie, who were their sixth and seventh leading scorers on a per game basis last year, leave to sign minimum deals with other contenders. It’s one thing to watch contributors leave for long-term deals or more money, but Lakers fans have grown extremely frustrated (and understandably so) watching the Lakers get worse while players leave for minimum money elsewhere — without any replacements they can even pretend are upgrades.
The Lakers find themselves in this position for a few reasons, one of which being their continued refusal to get truly involved on the trade market with their future draft picks. Rob Pelinka has not been willing to mortgage the Lakers long-term future for one more run, which is certainly understandable, but isn’t exactly inspiring for fans or the likes of LeBron James and Anthony Davis. Beyond that, they are dealing with the consequences of three failed bets they placed last year, which has clogged up their roster and kept them from getting into the top-end of the vet minimum market.
After signing Vincent and Vanderbilt a year ago, the Lakers chose to fill out their roster by offering two-year vet min deals with player options to Cam Reddish, Jaxson Hayes, and Christian Wood. The idea was that a couple of them would be solid contributors, providing more value than their minimum deals, which would mean they’d either return to L.A. on a value contract or decline their option and free up a roster spot. Instead, the Lakers rolled snake eyes on all three. Hayes played in 70 games, a byproduct of the Lakers extremely thin center rotation, but averaged just 4.3 points and 3.0 rebounds per game. Reddish played in 48 games, starting 26, but averaged just 5.4 points per game and shot 33.8 percent from three, ultimately falling out of Darvin Ham’s rotation. Wood averaged 6.9 points and 5.1 rebounds per game, but had his worst shooting season of his career (30.7 percent from three) and had his season end in late February with a knee injury that required surgery.
As a result, all three players picked up their player options to secure guaranteed money for this season, clogging up the Lakers roster and further choking out any avenues for minor upgrades to the rotation. Wood and Hayes will, once again, be the Lakers center depth behind Davis, and with Bronny James signing a full-time deal as a second round exception, the Lakers roster is full at 15 players. With there not being any apparent activity on the trade market, it certainly looks like this is the group JJ Redick will start his coaching career with.
It’s not the worst team in the league by any stretch, but in a loaded Western Conference, it’s hard to see how they make the necessary leap to get in the conversation at the top. A healthy Vanderbilt would certainly help their defense and provide some versatility in the frontcourt. The same can be said for Vincent in filling Dinwiddie’s spot in the backcourt rotation after he just never looked right after returning from injury late in the season. However, depth will be a concern again, as the center rotation behind Davis is suboptimal and it gets a bit dicey beyond their top three guards.
On top of all that, Redick has stated he wants the Lakers to up their three-point volume, but he just saw two of their five best shooters from a year ago leave in Prince and Russell. Knecht can potentially fill some of that void, but they now have just three players that were above league average (35.3 percent) from deep a year ago — James (41.0), Russell (41.5), and Reaves (36.7). That doesn’t bode particularly well for their new coach to be able to install the kind of offense he’s hoping to run, and how they navigate a dearth of shooting will once again be a theme for this Lakers team — a fairly consistent issue since their title run in 2020.
All of those factors point to another year of the Lakers battling it out in Play-In territory in the West. It’s not the worst fate a team can have, but it’s certainly not where a squad built around LeBron James and Anthony Davis wants to be. For anyone wondering how that can happen, you can simply look to a few failed rolls of the dice last year that now haunt their cap sheet, and a refusal to take another big swing.