As the Los Angeles Lakers struggle through their second consecutive losing season, fans are growing extremely impatient with the state of the team. Lakers President Jeanie Buss is just as impatient in trying to get the team back into championship contention.
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According to Mark Medina of the Los Angeles Daily News, Buss said that the basketball operations team has assured her that the Lakers will be back in contention soon:
I’ve been assured by our basketball operations that the team will be back in contention soon. If we are not meeting those goals, then changes have to occur,” Buss said in a recent interview with Los Angeles News Group in her office at the Lakers’ practice facility in El Segundo. “I have no reason not to believe them when they tell me that’s what they can deliver. I don’t see what would be holding them back.”
Buss would reiterate that point again that changes could be coming, vowing to run the Lakers the same way her father, the late great Dr. Jerry Buss did via Medina:
Then we owe it to our shareholders, fans and partners that we have to move in a different direction to get this team back into contention,” Jeanie Buss said. “We made a commitment that we would operate the team the way Dr. Buss ran it.”
The Lakers are on pace to have the worst season in the history of the franchise and will miss the playoffs for the second straight season, only the second time that has happened in Lakers history.
This summer will be an extremely important one as the Lakers could have as many as four draft picks, including one in the top five, as well as enough cap space to offer someone a maximum contract in free agency.
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