Rob Pelinka still appears to have a very nice long runway in his current position.
An update emerged over the weekend about how much longer the Los Angeles Lakers GM Pelinka is expected to remain in his post. Dave McMenamin of ESPN reported during an appearance on “Hoops Talk with Allen Sliwa” that Pelinka will likely remain GM for as long as Jeanie Buss is in charge of the Lakers as their acting governor.
“So long as Jeanie’s in place, we also know that means that Rob Pelinka will be in place,” said McMenamin. “Because Jeanie’s the one who has elevated him every step of the way … I don’t anticipate, certainly not in the short-term, the way the Lakers operate changing dramatically whatsoever.”
The Buss family recently agreed to sell their majority ownership stake in the Lakers to Guggenheim Partners CEO Mark Walter at a record-setting $10 billion valuation. However, Jeanie will reportedly remain as Lakers governor as part of a contractually-stipulated clause in the agreement. We heard last month more specifically that Jeanie is still expected to stay in charge of the team through the end of the decade.
As for Pelinka, the 55-year-old former agent of Kobe Bryant, he was hired by the Buss family in 2017. During the first few years of Pelinka’s tenure, the Lakers signed LeBron James, traded for Anthony Davis, and won the 2020 NBA championship in the Orlando bubble. Though Pelinka has had some ugly whiffs since (namely, the disaster trade for Russell Westbrook in 2021), he earned himself a whole boatload of goodwill with the franchise-altering trade for Luka Doncic earlier this year.
Pelinka got a contract extension from the Lakers last April and also landed the new title of president of basketball operations to go along with his role as general manager. With Doncic also just agreeing to an enormous long-term extension with the Lakers, it looks like the team’s hierarchy (both at the player level and at the management level) is set for the next several years to come.
