There were a lot of winners in this year’s still-unfolding NBA free agency period. But the city of Los Angeles, and its two grasping teams, wasn’t among them.
As free agency has played out, the NBA’s vision of a parity-driven league has emerged in full force. Most of the teams atop the league’s pyramid have been pushed downward, or will face significant pressures on that front in the future. Denver, eliminated in the second round of the playoffs one year after its championship, saw itself get a little less formidable with the exit of Kentavious Caldwell-Pope to Orlando. The Boston Celtics just paid Jayson Tatum a record-breaking extension, and, while well positioned, they will face financial pressures and second-apron constraints in the years ahead.
Into this new constrictive team-building reality are other would-be competitors that appear well built but with limited or almost no flexibility.
Denver, the Dallas Mavericks, New York Knicks and Minnesota Timberwolves fit here. Perhaps Milwaukee does, too. Teams like Cleveland, on the heels of Donovan Mitchell’s extension, and the Pelicans, following the addition of DeJounte Murray and the possibility of trading Brandon Ingram, feel they can compete. The Suns, too, are on this list, if you subtract the “well built” and “competitor” parts.
Yes, Oklahoma City, the team that won the West last season, has markedly improved with the additions of Alex Caruso and Isaiah Hartenstein. And it’s youth is likely to only further coalesce and step up next season. But few teams have been guided by the long term shrewdness shown by Sam Presti over his tenure there.
They’re the exception to the new rule.
Into this mesh of emerging parity and limited options — particularly in a vastly loaded Western Conference — are both L.A. teams: Mediocre, unrealistic and stuck.
Both teams have fallen into vastly different, but equally problematic, traps.
The Lakers are in the LeBron James trap, and the King just agreed to a new deal Wednesday morning that gives him the chance to leave next summer. The Clippers have been ensnared by Steve Ballmer’s delusions of, if not grandeur, certainly the notion of real competitiveness.
For L.A., it’s a tricky and familiar spot. It is also, to be fair, one they have always leaned into philosophically: Embrace the star. Support to the extreme the talent. Accept the shine of all-time greats even if, at some point, that light does not translate into rings.
That was Jerry Buss’ operating approach in his historic stewardship of the Lakers, and his daughter, Jeanie Buss, has followed suit. We saw it at the end of Kobe Bryant’s career, and we’re seeing it now with LeBron.
Within the Lakers organization, the belief is that treating its stars properly — exceptionally — has real, tangible, and long-lasting benefits. They’ll point to LeBron’s arrival and the championship it eventually bestowed in 2020, and they believe absolutely and earnestly being known as an organization that treats its great properly will lead to more success in the years ahead, including with other stars who will arrive for similar reasons.
But it’s also true this Lakers team is nowhere near good enough to compete for a Western Conference crown, let alone a championship. No support of, or pandering to, a 39-year-old LeBron will alter that.
Since winning that title in 2020, the Lakers have been a perennial play-in team — or worse. They have stagnated, at best, while the rest of the conference has dramatically improved. Yes, the Lakers run two years ago to the conference finals reminded us all of LeBron’s inherent greatness — just as Denver sweeping them in that series reminded us of a very-real ceiling for L.A., at least as currently constructed.
There was talk and hope this offseason of pushing past those limits. LeBron would take a pay cut for a third star who would take a similar pay cut to play with him, and, presto, the Lakers might be back. Maybe there’s also be a big trade for an All-Star level player involving some combination of two future first-round picks, D’Angelo Russell, Dalton Knecht and Austin Reaves (who Lakers sources say the team does not want to move) — someone, say, like Trae Young or Mitchell.
That illusion has evaporated.
Klay Thompson was supposedly that player LeBron would take a discount for, and he’s now a Mav, further separating the space between L.A. and one of their supposed competitors. LeBron is taking his max, enfeebling the Lakers would-be flexibility to add help. Mitchell just signed an extension in Cleveland, and while in theory Young could be available, the Murray trade lessens that likelihood, barring a full-on Atlanta rebuild its ownership has been reluctant to embrace.
The Lakers were all-in on keeping LeBron: they drafted his son, they hired his podcast buddy, they gave him, six months before his 40th birthday, a max deal. And they will, as a result, most likely be locked in as a mediocre play-in team with an all-time great no longer great enough to carry this squad to the promised land.
And that’s at least better than the Clippers situation.
The other L.A. team had no good choices, so they choice the worst option of all: a path of pretending-to-compete-en-route-to-mediocrity. Giving Paul George the full max he coveted, and ultimately received from Philly, would have severely hamstrung the Clippers under the rules of that punitive second apron. But at least, if healthy and on paper, they would have had a fighting chance.
The other option, in lieu of PG, would have been a full rebuild. Accept this window has closed and the terrain of team building has simply changed too much to carry on.
That realization would mean shipping out Kawhi Leonard, saying goodbye to James Harden, accepting they are in no position in the current Western Conference to have a real go and simply rebooting with an eye to the future.
But the Ballmer trap got them.
Ballmer is an enthusiastic owner committed to winning, but wishes don’t equal wins and desire can’t conjure parades. So instead, his team gave Harden a two-year, $70 million deal, a desperate team dominated in negotiation by a need to pretend to still compete and the reality that if Harden left they could not replace him.
They overpaid a player who is far from enough.
But the same was true for George, and no PG for the Clippers means no chance.
The Lakers and Clippers have different challenges and separate reasons for the positions they find themselves in. But it adds up to the same reality: As this free agency period has bolstered several teams with a real chance to fight for a championship next season, both L.A. teams are mired in a certain mediocrity of their own making.
