After Kobe Bryant tore his Achilles in 2013, the Los Angeles Lakers were soon forced to rebuild, and they started to make good use of their draft picks.
Julius Randle, Brandon Ingram, D’Angelo Russell, Lonzo Ball and Kyle Kuzma — to name a few — became Lakers and quickly demonstrated they had potential.
Shortly after LeBron James joined the team in 2018, it was clear it couldn’t wait on those drafted players to develop since James was thought to be entering the tail end of his career.
Ingram and Ball were traded for Anthony Davis in 2019, a trade that produced a championship. Last summer, Kuzma, Kentavious Caldwell-Pope and Montrezl Harrell, plus a first-round draft pick, were sent to the Washington Wizards for Russell Westbrook.
The latter trade hasn’t worked out, at least not yet.
Lakers Hall of Famer James Worthy went on 97.1 The Ticket, a Detroit radio station, to appear on the “Stoney & Jansen Show.”
While there, he criticized the front office of his former team for its approach to roster construction in recent years.
Via Audacy.com:
“The Lakers, I think they have refused to build over the years,” Worthy said. “We’ve had some good players: (Brandon) Ingram, (Julius) Randle, (Lonzo) Ball. We have tried to win quickly. In Kobe’s last few years, we brought in (Steve) Nash who was a little bit older, Dwight Howard came in with a back injury. We traded away draft picks to try to win immediately and I think they’re going to have really think about how they need to build.
“You look at Memphis, you look at the way Boston is playing right now, you look at the way Milwaukee has built a team over time. We need to create players that have cohesiveness. We had it a couple years ago and we traded it all away to try to win, to try to match what Brooklyn was doing and what other teams were doing with their Big Three players. I think that’s going to go away. That’s an illusion, having the Big Three. You see what happened in Brooklyn, you see what happened with the Lakers. Even though everyone experienced injuries, you still should be playing better and you should definitely be in the playoffs. So the Lakers — it’s embarrassing and it’s unacceptable.”
Ever since James became a Laker, the team has opted to sign non-superstar players to one or two-year contracts, and the resulting roster turnover has prevented L.A. from building high-level chemistry.
There is also a feeling around the NBA that the “superteam” era is over, and the failed attempts to build such squads in L.A. and Brooklyn have only strengthened such sentiments.
It’s no wonder Worthy feels the way he does. The Lakers took him with the top pick in the 1982 NBA draft, and a year later, they traded star guard Norm Nixon for Byron Scott, who was a top pick in that year’s draft.
Those Lakers were patient year after year, even after tough playoff losses, and they were able to replenish their roster throughout the decade through the draft.
Right now, the current Lakers have a lack of draft picks, no salary cap space and not a lot of trade capital, which will make their task of replenishing the current roster difficult.
