The Los Angeles Lakers under the Buss family have often been referred to as a family business. They’ve run one of the NBA’s leanest front offices, spending big on stars and coaches but cutting corners in the less visible areas of their organization. That worked out quite well in the less-sophisticated NBA they once dominated, but it became a major problem over the last decade or so as the league modernized around them.
Enter Mark Walter, the owner of the Los Angeles Dodgers. He built Major League Baseball’s preeminent superpower through aggressive spending in every conceivable area. The Dodgers import stars, yes, but they’re also at the cutting edge of virtually every component of team building. They’ve won three of the past six World Series, but they also consistently have one of baseball’s most highly regarded farm systems. When he bought the Lakers last offseason, it was only a matter of time before he brought that same approach to the NBA.
The shuffling truly began during the season, when the Lakers reportedly fired most of their scouting staff. That included Joey and Jesse Buss, who had previously run scouting and the team’s G-League operation. They hired Lon Rosen, Magic Johnson’s former agent and a longtime Dodgers executive, to run their business operations, but as far as building the basketball team went, president of basketball operations Rob Pelinka revealed after the season that the two most significant hires would come in the form of assistant general managers.
Well, the Lakers hired the first on Monday as former New Orleans Pelicans vice president of strategy and operations Rohan Ramadas will occupy one of those assistant general manager slots, according to ESPN. “He’s a literal rocket scientist,” one source told ESPN, as Ramadas spent more than a decade working for the Aerospace Corporation before joining the NBA.
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Ramadas’ role will reportedly be centered around strategy, salary cap management and analytics. The next assistant general manager slot to be filled will reportedly focus on the draft, player evaluation and player development. There are no known candidates for that position, though notably, Yahoo reported that the Lakers offered Minnesota Timberwolves assistant general manager Steve Senior the title of vice president of basketball operations. He elected to remain with the Timberwolves. According to Yahoo, while Pelinka and Kurt Rambis have led the interview process for the Lakers, Dodgers executives Andrew Friedman and Farhan Zaidi have been involved as well.
The NBA Draft is less than one month away, and the Lakers hold the No. 25 overall pick. More importantly, they’re heading into an offseason in which they can potentially create roughly $48 million in cap space and have to decide how they’re going to use it to improve last year’s roster. Austin Reaves is headed for unrestricted free agency. So is LeBron James. What the roster will look like long-term is still very much a mystery.
But the organization that will build it is at least starting to take shape. There’s still a way to go, but the Dodger-fication of the Lakers appears to be well underway.
