Los Angeles Lakers general manager Rob Pelinka has a massive offseason ahead of him. Nearly the entire roster is entering unrestricted free agency, but the Lakers have plentiful cap space and three tradable first-round draft picks to work with to improve the team around superstar Luka Doncic.
Pelinka has been one of the most vocal NBA decision-makers about the harsh penalties of the new CBA apron system, showing that his preference is to avoid the strictest tiers. With that, developing the players they have in-house becomes all the more important, as Pelinka stated at his end-of-season press conference.
“I think in this salary cap system, player development is going to be a huge thing to lean into for success ultimately,” Pelinka said. “We’ve seen that. I think you could look at veteran players that have come here and developed. I’ll use Rui as an example. When we traded for him, and who he is now, he’s a different player. That’s a testament to JJ’s player development, staff, I see coach Bo sitting here, he’s poured in so much.
“So I think there can be development of veteran players too that are still young. I think we have Adou Thiero as another example. Had some bumps with his health this year but once he got healthy, JJ trusted him enough to put him in a playoff series, and got some big rebounds and made some big plays. Those are just examples.
“We have to continue to find young talent and develop them. In terms of the resources that Jeanie and Mark are providing for us, that’s an area that they really want us to grow. We see that, of course with our brother-sister organization with the Dodgers. They’ve invested a lot in player development and have done it so well. So that’s a conversation JJ and I are going to start to have. In addition to building out the front office infrastructure, are there additional resources he needs on the coaching staff to lean into player development and that arc? It’s a very important area for us to have Lakers excellence in.”
Pelinka is right that getting good value out of cheaper players is more important than ever in the CBA. The Oklahoma City Thunder have mastered that with players like Ajay Mitchell, Cason Wallace, Jared McCain, Isaiah Joe and more. The San Antonio Spurs are led almost exclusively by elite players on rookie contracts.
The Lakers have not gotten anywhere close to that same value, whether that be due to poor drafting or poor development. Regardless, the Lakers must work as a unit to fix that problem if they want to get the best bang for their buck in this vital offseason.
Rob Pelinka emphasizing optionality to improve roster
Pelinka discussed how the Lakers are going to build their roster around Luka Doncic effectively from scratch, and that they have to be open-minded in the ways they can build.
“I think that is a really good and the right word to use is optionality in this double-apron CBA, that’s almost an effective hard cap,” Pelinka said during his end-of-season press conference. “I think having optionality to roster plan and roster build, there are several ways to do it.
“There’s in the Draft, there’s through trades — where some teams are going to be getting off good players in this harsh system — and then there’s through free agency. We do have the optionality to look to all those different avenues to get better. The archetype of the roster we want is going to be retrofitted around Luka and the things he needs. Clearly, he’s that leader and player for the future that we want to build the right way around.”
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