For the second Media Day in a row, the Lakers are in the middle of a franchise sale that has left some things uncertain.
They spent most of the last year “Dodgerizing” the franchise, only for that to be upended this summer with another sale. On Thursday, President of Basketball Operations Rob Pelinka sat in front of the media again, with a sale pending and only so many questions with answers.
One bit of clarity that was revealed was that the front office has had meetings with the two new primary owners,
Bob Iger and Josh Kushner.
“We have had introductory meetings with Bob [Iger] and Josh [Kushner] and those have been excellent,” Pelinka said. “With a pending transaction, we’re not at liberty to talk more about that under league rules. But we’ve had preliminary discussions with them that have been really, really positive. In terms of the day-to-day, nothing’s changed. We’re operating with Lakers excellence.”
While Pelinka was open to talk about this, he was all-too-willing to use the pending sale as a crutch when asked other questions about the front office or ownership or really anything that he could conceivably use that excuse for.
The sale likely won’t be finalized for many more months. We didn’t really get any insight into things last time around prior to Walter’s sale becoming finalized, though we were at least able to make guesses based on the Dodgers.
This at least gives us some insight into how things are going and where we are. Now, would Pelinka have said anything different if the meeting didn’t go well? Well, he probably would have cited the pending sale and an inability to speak about it.
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