The Los Angeles Lakers appear to be going from basketball team to soap opera at record speed.
Thursday’s NBA trade deadline came and went without the Lakers making any move to upgrade their team. At 26-30 with a mismatched hodgepodge of veterans around LeBron James and Anthony Davis, the Lakers were in major need of a trade. But they inexplicably failed to get even a single deal done and subsequently got laughed at by the rest of the basketball world.
Speaking with reporters after the deadline passed, Lakers GM Rob Pelinka said that he consulted with James and Davis before deciding to stand pat.
“You can’t force another team to present yourself with a deal that is going to make your team be better. That’s up to them,” said Pelinka, per ESPN’s Dave McMenamin. “Throughout this process we had different things we looked at and like I’ve done in the past had conversations with LeBron and Anthony about it and I would say there’s alignment here. And that’s all that matters.”
On Friday though, McMenamin reported that both James and Davis did not actually support the idea of the Lakers doing nothing at the deadline. In fact, McMenamin, citing a source close to James and Davis, said that Pelinka’s statement about being in “alignment” with them was “totally false.”
That is a pretty bad look for the Lakers, especially since it was blatantly obvious, even to the casual fan, that something had to change with their roster. Even worse is the report claiming that the Lakers had a significant trade offer on the table but turned it down.
Before the trade deadline even passed, rumors abounded that the Lakers’ star players were pressuring the front office into making a change. As such, it sounds like they do not appreciate Pelinka’s suggestion that all sides had essentially agreed to do nothing.
Photo: Sep 27, 2019; Los Angeles, CA, USA; Los Angeles Lakers general manager Rob Pelinka answers a question during the Lakers media day at the UCLA Health Training Center in El Segundo, CA. Mandatory Credit: Robert Hanashiro-USA TODAY Sports
