Editor’s note: This is the Monday Feb. 21 edition of the Purple & Bold Lakers newsletter from reporter Kyle Goon. To receive the newsletter in your inbox, sign up here.

We’ll start with a confession.

At the onset of the season, I was asked directly by a high-level Lakers official whether I thought the 2021-22 roster – remade with Russell Westbrook and boatload of veterans – was better than the season before. My answer then, with all sincerity, was “yes.”

Although I was always skeptical of the fit of Westbrook alongside LeBron James and Anthony Davis (and offered skepticism in coverage), my thinking at the time was that it was better to have three superstars than two. That perception was shaped by the underwhelming 2020-21 campaign, dogged by injury and marginal chemistry, and the trade that the Lakers passed over for Kyle Lowry – which in hindsight seemed like it would have been a fortuitous move.

I also suspected that trading for Westbrook was motivated by some unseen human element that I could not yet understand: Perhaps the Lakers had elicited some pledge from Westbrook that he was ready to change, or perhaps James and Rob Pelinka – two of the biggest power brokers behind the deal – saw something that I had not, some way his talentcould be harnessed that would help build on his teammates’ talents and move the franchise closer to another championship.

I suppose it doesn’t really matter why I said what I said then, because now – as the Lakers struggle to stay afloat at 27-31 after 58 games compared to last season’s 35-23 – plainly, I was wrong.

There it is: accountability. It would be nice to see that going around the franchise.

But All-Star weekend hasn’t been a break from shots fired within the organization – if anything, it only magnified and intensified the dysfunction. James, who made the game-winning shot of the exhibition just 35 miles north of his hometown, made even bigger headlines by letting the world know he’s willing to leave the Lakers.

Less than a year ago, James said on a podcast, “I truly hope that I can finish my career with the Lakers,” even after a sobering first-round playoff exit. But over the weekend, he let sparks fly by complimenting every general manager not named Rob Pelinka. He lavished praise on Oklahoma City GM Sam Presti and Cleveland GM Koby Altman for their draft pick prowess. He retweeted a picture of L.A. Rams GM Les Snead – who famously traded off the Rams draft assets to build a Super Bowl-winning team – wearing a shirt that said “(Expletive) them draft picks,” with the caption: “LEGEND! My type of guy!”

As the coup de grace, James told veteran Cleveland scribe Jason Lloyd of The Athletic that “the door’s not closed” on a potential return to Cleveland. Imagine: Moving from California to Ohio to retire. As James soaked up the adoration of the crowd at Rocket Mortgage Fieldhouse, it was easy to see the alleged appeal.

But apparently, the door isn’t closed on James playing anywhere: “My last year will be played with my son,” James told The Athletic. “Wherever Bronny is at, that’s where I’ll be. I would do whatever it takes to play with my son for one year. It’s not about the money at that point.”

It’s hard to take James at face value here. He’s done the Cleveland comeback once and won the championship; there’s no need to try to repeat that leg of the tour. As Lloyd detailed further down from the sound bite, the Cavaliers don’t sound ready to bring him back with a young, organically built core on the rise. Then there’s everything that James has in California, including his Malibu mansion, his burgeoning businesses and a lifestyle that seems to agree with him. This was the man who once shared a pool selfie with the caption: “Smiling through it all! Can’t believe this my life”.

OK, so he wants to play with his son in the NBA. Disregard for a minute that Bronny James is a projected mid-second-round pick at the moment: Do you see LeBron James headlining in Charlotte? Or Orlando? Or Indianapolis? With respect to those cities, it’s difficult to imagine.

James isn’t just sharing life plans from his vision board: He’s making a leverage play against a front office that, until this weekend, believed it had him pinned. Maybe the Lakers don’t believe James, either. But he’s doing his best to make them wonder what happens in the summer of 2023, after his current contract runs out. You don’t always have to believe what he says, but you can believe he always says things for a reason.

This stems from the plainly obvious disagreement James has with the front office. He was being honest when asked whether he thought the Lakers could reach the Milwaukee Bucks’ level: “No.”

To James, that was a warning shot at Pelinka and whoever else in the Lakers hierarchy with a strong hand in personnel decisions: Change something, because this team is not going to win a championship.

The Lakers didn’t make a move, however. They determined the cost – which would have likely been the few draft picks they have left to trade, or Talen Horton-Tucker, or both – was not worth the reward. That’s not an absurd conclusion, especially given that even if the Lakers did punt on Westbrook after less than one season, their return would be John Wall, who hasn’t played all year. How does he move them toward a championship? He doesn’t.

Pelinka couldn’t speak in these specifics about any deals that never got done. But he did offer this insight into his approach: “It’s important to remember that the metric of success here is you win a championship or you don’t. There’s no middle ground.”

The implication is that any deal the Lakers could have pulled off with their limited trade assets was still middle ground. They would not have scaled an appreciable height toward the mountaintop.

Critically, Pelinka also said this: “Throughout this process we had different things we looked at and, like I’ve done in the past, had conversations with LeBron and Anthony about it and I would say there’s alignment here.”

That assertion – that James and Davis agreed with the trade deadline inaction – was quickly shot down by ESPN’s Dave McMenamin. James’ recent chattiness about how open his future is can be seen as an extension of how out of alignment James and the Lakers are.

It’s an odd impasse given that all the Lakers have ever tried to do is what James wants. The biggest move Pelinka ever made was trading for James’ handpicked teammate, Davis, who happens to be a client of James’ agent. That led directly to a championship the next year, with an explosive combination of two complementary stars who could play versatile defensive roles and kill opponents in the clutch inside the paint and out.

But the lesson the franchise took away wasn’t the blueprint to build a championship-level team; instead, the Lakers learned that they were basketball visionaries who operated in ways that no other franchise could appreciate or understand. They saw their privilege – a highly visible, profitable, storied NBA market where great players wanted to play – as hard-earned reflections of their character. And that’s how mistakes began to compound.

The Lakers cast off pieces that helped them win. The most relevant moves happened this offseason:

They traded away Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, Kyle Kuzma, Montrezl Harrell and a draft pick for Westbrook, who has not buoyed their championship odds, nor has he helped them win consistently when James and Davis have missed time with injury.
They let Alex Caruso, a beloved fan favorite but also one of the team’s best perimeter defenders, walk because of luxury tax concerns.
They posited the decision to extend Talen Horton-Tucker as a choice between the promising 21-year-old and Caruso; even if it was an either/or proposition (it wasn’t), they missed that one, too. Horton-Tucker may one day be a great player, but he’s still been inconsistent this year.
Fringe deals for Carmelo Anthony, Austin Reaves, Stanley Johnson and Avery Bradley have been fruitful, but that’s in part because deals for Kent Bazemore, Wayne Ellington, Dwight Howard, Rajon Rondo and DeAndre Jordan have largely been underwhelming and those guys aren’t playing much or at all.
You can give credit to the Lakers for signing Malik Monk when other teams didn’t give chase. But he may never have found a foothold in the rotation if Kendrick Nunn, who occupies a critical mid-level salary slot, had been healthy enough to play a single game. The front office can’t predict injuries, but Nunn is a miss nonetheless.
They gave a one-year extension to Frank Vogel, who had won a championship with a top-3 defense, then undercut him by not signing defensively capable personnel. Vogel and his coaching staff may have shortcomings in making the most of his roster. But if your carpenter has worked with a hammer and nails his entire life, he’s going to look at you sideways when you hand him a bag of screws.

These shortcomings are well known to any Lakers fan that is paying attention, so rehashing them isn’t necessarily to give new insight. But the sheer amount of mistakes the Lakers made reinforces that this season’s underwhelming results are a communal effort. That includes the front office and ownership, that includes the coaching staff, that includes the players, and it certainly includes LeBron James.

Everyone at the top levels of this organization is allergic to failure, wishing to wash their hands of it. Once Westbrook started hitting midseason slumps, competing reports jockeyed back and forth on exactly whose idea it was to trade for him. The potshots James has made deflect from his own role in bringing Westbrook to L.A. Meanwhile, the idea of the Lakers front office laying a hard line on his demands is a little rich, given that they’ve trumpeted James’ involvement in their deals for years. Rival front office executives openly snicker about Klutch CEO Rich Paul’s level of involvement in the franchise’s moves. The New Yorker caught Paul referring to the Lakers as “us” last year, even though he has a client roster across the league.

The Lakers like to be associated with their 17 NBA championships; when they fall short of that standard, they struggle to dole out blame. This played out in 2019, too, culminating with Magic Johnson quitting his job as president of basketball operations, then later accusing Pelinka of stabbing him in the back. Somehow, this office melodrama was forgotten a year later when Johnson was congratulating Pelinka over Twitter – because everyone in Lakerland likes a winner.

It’s exhausting and tedious to watch these passive-aggressive spectacles play out in these cycles. It reveals that the team’s post-game affirmations of turning things around are actually as shallow as puddles after a fleeting Southern California rain.

The frustration was high and the belief was low before Anthony Davis was hurt last week. Now that he’s out for at least four weeks (and likely more), how confident can the Lakers really be in themselves if the front office is saving 2027 draft picks and LeBron is clearing the runway for Cleveland Act III? There’s a lot of focus on the future, but not a lot of meaningful discourse on how the 2021-22 Lakers turn their act around – maybe because the key figures have already determined it will never happen.

Perhaps the only reason you would never completely close the door on the Lakers this season is because they have James. Even on an underperforming team, he is producing MVP-quality numbers: 29.1 points, 7.9 rebounds, 6.5 assists while shooting 58.8% eFG. What drives James’ frustration is that he knows how well he’s playing, and he doesn’t know how much longer he can keep it up. He is painfully aware that his prime is closing, if not this year, then the next, or the one after that. He can’t wait for draft picks – that’s a young man’s game.

But James has never owned that he doesn’t pick his teammates as well as he does in the All-Star game, where he improved to 5-0 on Sunday night as a team captain. His approval of the trade for Westbrook was a decision borne of hubris: Where Kevin Durant, James Harden, Paul George, Bradley Beal – even Carmelo Anthony – had failed, James believed he, Davis and the Lakers could succeed in crafting Westbrook into a superstar on a title-winning team. Since Westbrook’s split from Durant in 2016, he’s only everwon a single playoff series. That might continue after this season if the Lakers keep sliding down their current track.

It’s unbecoming of James, a four-time champion, to throw a fit at his front office for failing to undo the mistake he helped usher in. It would be more in keeping with the legacy he wants to leave behind to roll up his sleeves and try to make the best of what he’s got.

One of the saddest things about the past two seasons is that some observers have used underwhelming results to besmirch the Lakers’ 2020 championship. As an eyewitness to that event, I’ll never diminish the psychological strain the team endured being isolated and enclosed for three months on the path to a title that almost no NBA fans got to truly enjoy.

James endured that as much as anyone, often bemoaning the drudgery of life in the bubble and how it challenged him to be away from his family. But he led the team anyway, day by day, through that uncomfortable, trying situation to do what needed to be done, and win when it was time to win.

It’s now almost assured that a championship doesn’t lie at the end of the road for the Lakers this season. But it would be uplifting to see that side of LeBron James emerge again, showing integrity and accountability through his example.

Those are the qualities the Lakers will need to wander out of the darkness, back toward their old spot on the peak. And this time, there’s probably no shortcut to getting there. The sooner everyone gets to terms with that, the better.

It starts with saying you were wrong. So far, no one has been willing.

– Kyle Goon

Editor’s note: Thanks for reading the Purple & Bold Lakers newsletter from reporter Kyle Goon. To receive the newsletter in your inbox, sign up here.

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