Lakers urged to fire Rob Pelinka despite game-changing Luka Doncic trade originally appeared on The Sporting News.
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Playoff success has been hard to come by for the Los Angeles Lakers lately.
The 2019-20 Lakers squad, led by Anthony Davis and LeBron James, was loaded from top to bottom, resulting in a hard-fought bubble championship. Since then, Los Angeles has reached the Western Conference Finals only once and has yet to capture the Larry O’Brien Trophy.
The Lakers’ latest premature playoff exit occurred this season, as the 17-time NBA champions were swept by the Oklahoma City Thunder in the Western Conference Semifinals. While there are many individuals to blame for the Lakers’ recent postseason shortcomings, Bleacher Report’s Andy Bailey believes that general manager Rob Pelinka deserves a good portion of the criticism.
As a result, Bailey urged the Lakers to consider firing Pelinka despite the 56-year-old being largely responsible for helping the franchise land Luka Doncic last February.
“Pelinka deserves some credit for adding helpful veterans like Dwight Howard and Kentavious Caldwell-Pope around James and Davis before 2020,” Bailey wrote Monday. “But then Pelinka nuked much of that by blowing up the title team via the Russell Westbrook trade.”
“Pelinka doesn’t own that entirely (it was another move LeBron pushed for), but thinking Westbrook and James would fit together seems absurd in hindsight. From that point until the Luka trade, L.A. hovered around mediocrity. The Lakers missed the playoffs in 2022, got swept by the Denver Nuggets in 2023, and lost in the first round in 2024.”
“And while Pelinka, again, deserves at least some credit for getting Dončić to the Lakers, it’s very easy to assign most of the responsibility for that all-time blunder to then-Dallas Mavericks general manager Nico Harrison. Add to that context Pelinka’s drafting history and some of the lesser-known moves he’s made, and it’s easy to see why some fans would rather someone else be in charge for the Luka era.”
Are the Lakers likely to move on from Pelinka anytime soon? Probably not, considering Doncic has only been in Los Angeles for 1.5 seasons, and the future appears bright with the former Mavericks superstar leading the organization’s offense.
That said, Pelinka should feel motivated to make the moves necessary to help the Lakers return to the top of the Western Conference and hang championship banners at Crypto.com Arena. Failing to do so in Doncic’s prime could prompt the Lakers to, at the very least, question if Pelinka is cut out for the demanding front office job.
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