When the Lakers lost to the Clippers on Jan. 19, LeBron James noted afterward that they “have to play close-to-perfect basketball” in order to win because “that’s the way our team is constructed.” It was harsh yet timely criticism of his roster, a nudge to the front office to make improvements ahead of the trade deadline. In case you’ve been spending Januaries under a rock, you’re aware that he tends to do this most winters.
He hasn’t been alone this season. Some stakeholders have been a bit more subtle. LeBron’s words came in response to head coach JJ Redick’s own admission that the Lakers “don’t have a huge margin for error.” He emphasized the need for the team to execute the game plan and operate as a group because they “don’t have a guy on our team that’s going to necessarily always draw two to the ball. We don’t have a guy on our team that’s going to be able to get past his guy one-on-one and get to the paint and spread it out to the perimeter.” Though he would later clarify that he was trying to make a point about playing style rather than roster, quotes like that can’t be unspoken during trade season.
Anthony Davis is being overt. “I think we need another big,” Davis told ESPN’s Shams Charania. “I feel like I’ve always been at my best when I’ve been the 4, having a big out there.”
These conversations are happening in private too, of course. James and Davis have both expressed to the team a desire for them to use their two tradable first-round picks to upgrade the roster and genuinely attempt to compete for a championship, according to Charania. But the increasingly public nature of the debate on trading those first-round picks points to a wider question facing the Lakers, and it’s the one that will define their choices at the deadline: Who is the priority here?
Another title push with LeBron and AD?
Is it James? At 40, even he can’t stave off Father Time much longer. Though still an All-Star starter, there are finally visible signs of decline for perhaps the greatest player of all time. His rim stats are trending down. His defense is… let’s call it inconsistent. He rarely gets to the line anymore. His priority is, justifiably, to win as much as humanly possible in the short time he has left with the team. If he was still the best player in the world, that might warrant the sort of expenditure he’s hoping they make.
It’s not as clear if his current state does. There’a an air of uncertainty surrounding this year’s team. They’re 25-18, but they have a negative point-differential. They can beat the full-strength Celtics and lose to the injury-decimated Mavericks. They’re finally winning the minutes James rests, but they’re losing the ones he plays. They’re a different team every night. They’re a different team every quarter. That’s a scary team to invest in. Perhaps the next week makes it a bit easier. The Lakers have a Charmin-soft schedule coming up, even if it’s on the road: at Charlotte, at Philadelphia and at Washington. Jarred Vanderbilt returned and played well on Saturday, potentially improving the moribund perimeter defense. If the James-version of this team can seriously compete, it has to prove it now.
If Davis is the priority, well, that’s slightly more clarifying. Davis, 31, can operate on a longer time horizon, and the nature of his request reflects that. Moving him to power forward is about keeping him fresh. Despite his contention that the 2020 Laker championship was evidence that the team operates best with him playing next to a center, there simply isn’t statistical evidence suggesting that is true. The Lakers all but abandoned that lineup construction by the 2022-23 season, but in each of his first three years as a Laker, their net rating was higher with him at center, according to Cleaning the Glass. Usually, the gap was significant.
The obvious reason for that is the strain playing Davis at power forward puts on the offense. It’s much harder for James to be James if he’s playing with Davis, who by now has proven beyond a shadow of a doubt to be a subpar jump-shooter, and a traditional center who also can’t shoot. That was true when James was closer to his peak. Now that he’s lost a step, it would only be harder for him to operate in lineups with less spacing. Perhaps his growth as a shooter could push those lineups in the right direction, but remember, the Lakers are not a good shooting team on balance. They rank 19th in the NBA in 3-point percentage and 26th in 3-point attempt rate. Redick emphasized 3-point volume as a priority before the season. Investing in most big men would push the Lakers further back into the stone age, especially with Vanderbilt, a poor shooter, back in the rotation.
That might be acceptable within the Davis window. If this isn’t his team now, it soon will be, and no matter how much longer the Lakers have James, they have Davis under contract for at least two more years after this one. If their plan is to build the next iteration of their team around him, then, well, it might make sense to get him his center. Aside from keeping him fresher, it’s also an acknowledgement that this year is not necessarily the be-all and end-all. You can retrofit a roster around two big men if you give yourself a few years to do it. Davis has those years. James does not.
What about the first-year coach and veteran exec?
Redick is a bit of a wild card. Coaches have no defined timelines, but the Lakers made it clear that he was hired for the long haul last summer. The tone of their entire coaching search revolved around culture-building and player-development. The Lakers want something sustainable. The reality of any sort of immediate investment, whether it’s in a James-centric or Davis-centric addition, makes that harder. The Lakers are already without their first-round picks in 2025 and 2027. Toss 2029 and/or 2031 out the window and the Lakers are locked into a core. Not exactly ideal for a coach still figuring things out.
He’s further along on that front than Darvin Ham was. Redick has outperformed expectations this season and he’s done so with an extremely flawed roster. Contention is no certainty even with better players, but he won’t get out-worked or out-schemed by his more experienced Western Conference counterparts. Redick can win now. He can win later. Given the players and assets available here, there’s no easy way to do both.
Overseeing all of this is Rob Pelinka, facing more pressure than anyone else in his building. He’s caved to the whims of his stars before. The Russell Westbrook trade may have been conceived by James and Davis, but Pelinka bears responsibility for completing it. He’s now been allowed to hire two coaches that he’s had to later fire in Frank Vogel and Darvin Ham. The Lakers hold themselves to a championship standard. Mitch Kupchak was fired in the seventh season after his last Lakers championship. This is the fourth post-title season for Pelinka, but unlike Kupchak, he has only a single ring to his name.
Pelinka’s seat isn’t necessarily hot, but one way or another, it’s about to get warmer. The Lakers don’t tolerate 45-win seasons, but that’s been the post-2020 norm. Improvement requires investment, but with limited capital, it’s an investment the Lakers only get to make once. Pelinka himself noted this all the way back at media day in 2022, when the debate about whether or not the Lakers should trade Westbrook was front and center, saying “you have one shot to make a trade with multiple picks, so if you make that trade, and I’m not talking about any particular player on our team, but if you make that trade, it has to be the right one. You have one shot to do it.”
Take that shot and miss? It’s game over. If Pelinka gives up those picks in 2029 and 2031 and the Lakers, say, lose a second-round series in five games? There’s just no reasonable way to spin that as a success, and he has to explain why a general manager on his third coach gets to preside over a rebuild whose primary tools he’s given away. Pelinka may not be dealing with an overt threat to his job security, but the reality of his resume creates an implicit one.
A rebuild is no safer. Kupchak and Jim Buss didn’t see theirs through to the end. Many general managers don’t. Rebuilds involve losing. Few teams take kindly to losing, least of all the Lakers. There is an argument to be made here that the optimal move in terms of building long-term championship equity for the Lakers would be to trade James and Davis now, while they have value, and use the assets accumulated to get younger stars for the next generation. Pelinka likely doesn’t want to risk starting that process only so his successor can finish it.
So he’s played both sides, at least thus far. He’s kept James and Davis without spending the picks needed to give them a chance to win. He’s explored major trades without committing to one. It isn’t a surprise, therefore, that when asked what it would take to trade those picks before the season, his response was “sustained Lakers excellence.” The implication there is that this isn’t about James, Davis, Redick or anyone else. Those picks are the keys to whatever the future of the Lakers looks like. They are not to be spent lightly. The Lakers might need to wield those picks to trade for the star that succeeds James and Davis, not one who’s available to join them now. Maybe they’re just standard draft picks, meant to be spent on 19-year-olds years down the line. It’s too early to say.
Which candidates make sense?
Is there a way to satisfy everyone here? It would be tough with the players seemingly on the market. The center most frequently linked to the Lakers is Walker Kessler, who does not shoot 3-pointers. He’s not helping James offensively. The sort of shotmakers that could — the Bradley Beal, Zach LaVine types floating around — are likely too costly financially anyway, and even if they weren’t, would strain Davis even further defensively. The Lakers already got the obvious 3-and-D player on the market in Dorian Finney-Smith. There aren’t many more of them available. The league has learned not to treat them as mere role players. Those that have them hold on for dear life.
If there’s a compromise candidate out there, it’s one the Lakers have come close to adding in the past. Myles Turner is an impending free agent. Re-signing him, under the current salary structure, would likely push the Pacers into the luxury tax, which they are unlikely to pay. There have been rumors of his availability lately. The Lakers considered a Turner trade back in 2022 involving Westbrook. They elected not to make it then. Would they take the plunge if a second chance presented itself?
Turner is a viable 3-point shooter. His rim-protection has declined in recent years, but he’s playing on a team with very little point-of-attack defense. The Lakers don’t have much either, but having Davis nearby helps a great deal. At the very least he could take the matchups Davis wants to avoid. The Lakers are as familiar with him as any team besides the Pacers given those 2022 flirtations. If he’s available, he’s probably gettable for a single first-round pick, potentially with some smaller asset attached as well, giving Pelinka further ammunition to work with now or later. He’s by no means a perfect player, but he checks the boxes everyone is looking to check.
When there’s a single viable trade option available on that front, though, you know you have an organization facing alignment issues. In all likelihood, someone important is going to be unsatisfied with how the 2025 deadline plays out for the Lakers. Until the Lakers identify whose needs take priority, though, who exactly that will be remains a mystery.
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