The long offseason finally ended on Thursday, with President of Basketball Operations Rob Pelinka and head coach JJ Redick sitting down for their annual presser days before the team’s own Media Day.
Every season-opening presser has its own storylines, but this one had a clear main theme coming in. With LeBron James leaving in free agency, the team was fully in the Luka Dončić era. Add in bringing back Austin Reaves and acquiring Walker Kessler and the team has a clear new core heading into the future.
There was plenty of discussion about that future, as well as the team’s approach to the offseason, throughout the presser. Let’s look at some of the notable takeaways.
The team had a clear plan this offseason
Pelinka opened up the presser by acknowledging LeBron James’ departure and thanking him for his time in LA. He followed that up by revealing how LA formed its offseason plan after LeBron moved on.
The three biggest items on the to-do list were to re-sign Austin Reaves, acquire a center of the future and add dribble-pass-shoot players.
“That was sort of our three-pronged thesis basketball-wise for the offseason, and we felt like we accomplished all those things,” Pelinka said. “Re-signing Austin, putting together a trade to acquire Walker Kessler and then building out our team with young players that could dribble past, shoot and have brought the average age of our roster to around 26 or 27, which lines up so perfectly with Luka and building a team around Luka Dončić.”
There’s a lot of excitement about Walker Kessler
Kessler was not just a common topic throughout the presser, but someone the team is very excited about.
“I think Walker’s a perfect fit for Luka and [Austin Reaves] just in terms of his rim protection and really being an anchor for our defense,” Redick said. “It’s an area we’ve struggled with. I know that we have switched a lot, one through five, over the last two years. That has been by necessity. We look at him as someone we want close to the basket, protecting the rim.
“I just looked at him, if you canvass the league and you kind of look at age groups and even the ability to even acquire someone, right? He’s just the perfect fit for those guys and for building out the next phase of the Lakers.”
The team made a big gamble in bringing in Kessler, but you could see they put a lot of thought into it and are confident it will work out.
The team involved Luka Dončić in roster-building this summer
As has been the case for much of his tenure in the front office, Pelinka involved his superstar on roster construction. While that relationship with LeBron was strained in the later years of his time in purple and gold, everything with Luka has been on the up and up.
This summer, even though Luka was in Europe, he was still part of the conversation as the Lakers built their roster around him.
“Luka’s the world’s greatest offensive player,” Pelinka said. “For us to be able to have an opportunity as a franchise, to have that player in our building every night as a 26-year-old, is special and it requires us to do special things to build the team around him. That’s what we started this summer and we’re really, really happy with the way it’s looking so far.”
For all of Pelinka’s faults, he knows how to take care of star players. At least until they recommend the team trades for Russell Westbrook.
JJ Redick will utilize the depth more this season
There was plenty of criticism about Redick and how little he used his bench at the end of last season. It was a sort of chicken-and-egg problem. Was Redick not playing more players because the bench was bad or was the bench bad because Redick wasn’t using them?
At least at the start of this season, Redick has plans on using his deeper bench. When asked about the team’s depth at wing this year, Redick remarked not just about that position but the team as a whole.
“We’ve got six or seven wings that have an opportunity to play,” he said. “We’re going to play more guys this year. We’re just naturally deeper. We have the luxury of doing that, if we’re healthy, with this roster.”
This is a roster where, in theory, every player is playable. This hasn’t always been the case in recent seasons. But part of the focus this summer was building out a deeper roster to be able to absorb injuries, or avoid them altogether with lighter workloads, this season.
“I think we have great wing depth and I’m really excited for camp to start next week and for us to go through the preseason process because there’s a lot of minutes, there’s starting spots that are up for grabs. So I think we’re gonna have a highly competitive camp.
“We’ve been in the gym as a group, in small group workouts, and these guys have been playing pickup for the last six weeks…it’s been a highly competitive gym and I think we have enough perimeter defense. I think we have plenty of shooting and plenty of ball handling.”
This team is not a finished product
What both Pelinka and Redick made clear as well was that this team is not a finished product. For one, Redick noted that one offseason is not enough to completely overhaul the roster.
“To me, this is not, and it never will be, a full rebuild around Luka in one offseason,” Redick said. “That’s not the way the NBA works and particularly with free agency the way it is now. I like everything we did this summer to build around him, to build around AR, and to provide us with a ton of depth.”
At the same time, he also made it known that the roster is not a championship-level one because no roster is at that level in the preseason.
“No one is a championship-level team on September 29,” Redick said. “There’s not a team in the league that is a championship-level team. That is an ongoing process throughout the year. Rob talks about his job in that. Well, I have a job in that. Our players have a job in that. I’m confident we’re going to develop as a team into a championship-level team this year.”
That process will take its first big steps with training camp next week, and the excitement in the fanbase could hardly be higher.
You can follow Jacob on Twitter at @JacobRude or on Bluesky at @jacobrude.bsky.social.
