Locked On Lakers - Daily Podcast On The Los Angeles Lakers - How Can the Lakers Close the Gap Between Them, San Antonio and Oklahoma City?

Starting point is 00:00:00 Game one of the Western Conference Finals reminds everyone the Lakers are far behind San Antonio in Oklahoma City, but exactly how far and how quickly can they make up the gap that's next. You are Locked on Lakers. Your daily Los Angeles Lakers podcast, part of the Locked on Podcast Network, your team every day. Thanks to everybody for stopping by. Locked on Lakers, Brian Komenetsky, Andy Kaminetsky, plenty to get into. after a thrilling game one of the Western Conference Finals, that quite frankly has the entire rest of the Western Conference,

Starting point is 00:00:43 if not the entire NBA, freaking the bleep out. Locked on Lakers, I do need to tell everybody, is brought to you today by Fandual. Right now, new customers can bet just $5 and get $150 in bonus bets if your first bet wins. Head to Fandual.com to get started. So all of this, of course, leads to the larger conference about how good Rob Polinkin needs to be over the course of this summer to try to make up this gap.

Starting point is 00:01:11 But my God, Andy, game one, these two teams are so good and so young and or so possessing of about 943,000 draft picks in the case of Oklahoma City, who are a little further along in the maturity curve and have to deal with some of the financial issues, but they've got plenty of draft picks to replenish, and their most important players are locked up. Meanwhile, the Spurs in game one of the conference finals played a grand total, Andy, of zero players more than 10 minutes who are older than 26. It's insane, man.

Starting point is 00:01:51 Obviously, the Spurs or the Thunder, they need to, whichever one gets through the Western Conference finals, obviously has to win a title before they are crowned. But I will say the only thing that may hold either one of these teams back from winning a championship this year is having to play each other might just beat the ever-living crap out of whoever gets out of this round. And Cleveland or New York may just be that much fresher, whatever. these two teams look far better than the cabs or the Knicks and quite frankly look like they are

Starting point is 00:02:37 better than the rest of the league like forget what we're going to get into in terms of how well situated they are moving forward and basically as well situated as you can realistically or even unrealistically be for like the next five seven or so years. years. Like, it's crazy when you just look at the now and the future. Like, it's things can happen. You know, I've already heard from some people on Twitter at Cam Brothers when we've talked about this and for what it's worth. Magic Johnson on Twitter, quote, I hate to break the news to the rest of the Western Conference, but they may not have a chance to win the Western Conference finals for the next five to seven years.

Starting point is 00:03:29 the Oklahoma City Thunder and San Antonio Spurs are just that good. They are talented, deep athletic, and both teams are well coached. Good thing, by the way, that Magic does not, according to Lon Rosen, have an official role with the Lakers. He's not wrong. No, no, no, no, he's not wrong at all. I'm just saying. Find the lies, no. I'm just saying that's not what you want to hear from somebody with an official role with the Lakers. It's true.

Starting point is 00:03:57 That's not what you want to hear. we're all going to die I mean well you look I mean and you're right we've heard from we'll get to you know obviously the context of this with the Lakers here in a moment

Starting point is 00:04:11 but like people are correctly point out Oklahoma City's reaching that place where they are going to have to start either paying more money or letting players go or both like you know they're going to have first apron second apron choices and all these other things I actually do think they'll spend

Starting point is 00:04:27 a little more to keep this you know, that's not going to be an issue. You know, they won't be. Those unaware, the Thunder's Arena is paid with like somewhere between, I think, like 90 to 100 percent tax money. Like, they're going to be just fine. Right. And so, you know, they've got to be locked up.

Starting point is 00:04:50 And they don't have, like, somebody, they're going to have to let go of Lou Dord. They're going to have to let go of Hartenstein or whatever might be. That is true. And these things will be important. going forward. I mean, I have to let go, but probably one of the two is certainly gone. But, you know, you can plug Kaysen Wallace into the Lou Dort role. And, you know, they've got young players that never get a chance to play because the team is so deep. And they've got Nikola Topic, who everybody loves and like all these other things. And eat more than that. They have

Starting point is 00:05:19 8,000 draft picks over the next few years, which they can use to everybody, everybody would talk about many people would talk about, oh, they're going to use those picks to bring in one more star and something like that. And as soon as Shea and Jay Will kind of became very obviously all-star caliber slash MVP caliber players, it became plainly obvious to me is that's not what they were going to do with those picks. They're going to hold on to them to make it so they never have to pay a guy, something that they're more than a comfortable with. And that's how you are able to sustain something like this. And again, San Antonio has fewer picks. They've got some coming in, but they've got some going out. They've got fewer picks, although they, you know,

Starting point is 00:06:08 still a positive ledger there. They don't, they're not going to have to worry about paying Wemby, Castle, and Dylan Harper, all three of them for years. Like seasons are going to go by before that. Castle just finished his second year. Wemby just finished his third. Harper's a rookie. And by the time those guys need to be paid, the Harrison bars and, you know, even maybe Deerrin Fox, like the point being that these teams are really well situated. Fox is under contract for a while.

Starting point is 00:06:39 A little while. A long contract. It is, but it ends, I bet it ends right around when Harper would be eligible for some gigantor, you know, next rookie,

Starting point is 00:06:52 you know, off of his extended rookie contract extension. I would imagine those two just mathematically have to line up pretty well. And so, not sure, but, but they don't overlap. They can't, mathematically, they can't overlap by a lot. And so the point being here, like, yes, stuff can happen, but these teams are as well situated as you can possibly be to sustain success in the current CBA. So what do you do if you're the Lakers? That's the challenge.

Starting point is 00:07:28 Well, what I was really going to say about Deerrin Fox, and I just looked it up, his contract runs through 2030. And it's a longer deal. And, you know, it's not inexpensive. The last year is going to pay him around $61 million a season. But what I was going to actually say, like, however, that lines up exactly with the eventual Dylan Harper extension or frankly the Carter Bryant extension, he's been quite good this year as well. if the worst contract you have is a player who's really good,

Starting point is 00:08:01 like in terms of, I guess, trying to map out your entire future four years down the line, if the most problematic contract is a guy that's not a problem, I'm not saying it's nothing to figure out. I'm saying GMs around the league kill for that kind of problem. Yes. Like if that's your big...

Starting point is 00:08:22 And by the way, it's not and it's not a, 36-year-old version of Deeran Fox. It's like a 32-year-old version. I think he's 28 right now. So it's it's it's it's tough sledding for the for the Western Conference GMs. And so, you know, the Lakers are obviously playing with fewer tools in the toolbox to try to make this work. What they do have, as Rob Polinka has rightly pointed out, is they have the general generational superstar in Luca Donchich, who is in his prime, which means you can't F around here. You've got to try to take advantage of this daunting as the task may be with these two teams.

Starting point is 00:09:09 You've got to figure out how do we close the gap as quickly as we can. They have that guy. They've got a secondary player in Austin Reeves, who's an all-star caliber player. You've still got access to LeBron James, who is quite literally an all-star caliber player, made the team last year. you've got the three draft picks to trade. Like, so, okay, you've got some stuff. The challenge in front of Polinka is significant, though, and how he approaches it is really critical.

Starting point is 00:09:38 When we get back, I want to revisit the question that I asked Rob during his and JJ Reddick's exit interview that directly dealt with this question of not just how are they going to retool the roster this offseason, but also the way that they are doing it, which is you could not be more opposite, like a true 180-degree opposite approach to how the thunder and spurs, and I think a team like the Pistons even that's on the upswing,

Starting point is 00:10:16 have put themselves in that type of position. So we can talk about all that coming up next. Locked on Lakers is brought to you by Fandul, the NBA playoffs. They are in full swing. Hell, yes, they are. They were swinging on Monday. And every, I mean, look, you're a basketball fan, and I presume most of you all love the game, even if the Lakers aren't in it.

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Starting point is 00:12:38 and dive into your favorite team or the Dallas Mavericks for Hot Takes, fresh memes and a group chat that literally never sleeps. Download the Reddit app today. Okay, so you had something that you wanted to unpack here, Andy. Yeah,

Starting point is 00:12:59 the exit interviews for JJ and Rob, the question I asked Rob got an interesting response on a couple levels, one, what he said, but also he kind of answered a question initially with a question to me, which is very unusual, but it pertains to what we're talking about. So here's the exchange, quote, me to Rob. Rob, when you look around some of the teams that are ascending still in the playoffs, the Thunder, the spurs, the pistons. They're built a lot through the draft with cost control players, more of a runway. This franchise tends to be a lot more win now, immediacy. What makes you confident this approach can still work, given how the landscape may be changing? Palinka, to me.

Starting point is 00:13:43 Yeah, I mean, I guess maybe a question about those teams. You mentioned Detroit, San Antonio, OKC. What did those teams have to go through to build through the draft, in your opinion? I responded. Losses, rebuilding. Palinkin. Yeah. Like, multiple seasons of losses, and that's just not part of our infrastructure here. As much as some of us might want to be that way, it's not the Lakers way. We have to find sustained excellence. And so it does create at times a thread the needle where you've got to find a way to have championship rosters every year.

Starting point is 00:14:14 I will say the hardest thing to do at that point is to have a young transformative player that can carry you in the playoffs all the way to do championship. That's the hardest thing to get. You can lose five years in a row and get five top five. five picks and come out of it without that player. It's really hard. But we were able to get that in Luca. So that part of the puzzle was solved. And we're grateful for that.

Starting point is 00:14:34 Now it's just a matter of putting all those pieces around that to be able to get to the end. And there's a lot in this that's really interesting, Brian. First, Rob's admission that they don't rebuild, you know, it's certainly not intentionally at the very least, or not in a way that feels obvious to fans because they never want to project that as part of. I mean, you and I, we hosted like eight years of postgame shows during our rebuild. But as we said often at the time, they were not truly rebuilding. They were actually chasing eight seeds for a while while Kobe was still on the roster

Starting point is 00:15:11 and just falling ass backwards into lottery picks because their ridiculous plan wasn't working. But they were not engaged in a full-on rebuild. Like they were not. Rob also conceded, doing it. it this way can be very difficult. As he said, threading the needle, his words, not mine. Also, too, though, the idea

Starting point is 00:15:32 that you can lose a bunch of years in a row, get a bunch of top five picks and come out, not come out of it with a Luca level superstar, which is true. The issue, though, that I have, and then I'll let you react to all this as well,

Starting point is 00:15:48 Brian, but the issue that I have with Rob framing it that way is that he may be correct. I mean, He's definitely correct. There's no guarantee any top five pick is going to land you a superstar. But building this way is about more than just landing the superstar with that pick. It's about building a roster of good young players who maybe they don't end up at Luca's level, but they could end up really good foundational pieces for a championship team.

Starting point is 00:16:24 And just the idea of willingly as just an organizational ethos, obviously they would not look to rebuild right now. That would make no sense with Luca. So I'm not suggesting they should be tanking now. That would be ridiculous. But they are nonetheless doing this in a way that is in some ways antithetical to modern NBA front offices. And by Rob's own admission, this is going to be difficult. Well, yeah, I mean, I think it's hard, but it's also, you know, you kind of said it. Like, it's, it, you can have a larger philosophical discussion about should the Lakers think differently about how they look to build teams and how what they should do and how they do it and so on and so on.

Starting point is 00:17:14 Those are all legitimate conversations to have. They're also kind of irrelevant for right now because they, you say, you can't do it now. You only have the one path in front of you. So, you know, to the larger philosophical question of should the Lakers as an organization be more willing to, in the Thunder, to be, it's worth noting. The Thunder were not bad for like a decade. They were bad for like three years. And then we're pretty competitive again. But like you can have the larger philosophical conversation about what.

Starting point is 00:17:52 direct what the organization ought to be doing from year to year when that none of that's going to matter right now because if even take a step back to take a step forward again not necessarily this do it right in general you cannot do it right now sure but just these things lead to where they are now sure i i like the we we have spoken in great detail about the some of the mistakes they've made that them have put themselves in this position the question is What do you do going forward? And to your point, it is the path that they have in front of them is really, really, really challenging. Because when you, it's not even like you have Luca at 22 or 23.

Starting point is 00:18:38 The Mavs can afford to be bad for a couple seasons around Cooper Flagg. And, you know, build something like that knowing that when he, it's not like they're going to let him go. with like he's going to sign a max deal and all that other stuff. They can afford that. The Spurs actually could have. And we're initially like somewhat conservative in how they were building around Wembe and content not to immediately try to win a title because they knew they had some years there. They've just rocket, you know, they're in a rocket path because they nailed the castle pick

Starting point is 00:19:16 and the Harper pick and all the other stuff going on around there. Kelton Johnson, Devin Vassell, those guys are suddenly slotted perfectly on that roster. And so it works out. The Lakers have the superstar. They've got the other, and they have no choice. Right. But to try to go all in over the next couple of years because otherwise, what's the point of having Luca? Yeah.

Starting point is 00:19:45 Of course. Again, and I will reiterate it just because. this, I tweeted out the exchange between me and Rob, and there was a lot of reaction of Rob's explaining you, dummy, why they're not tanking now. And my response is, I didn't ask Rob why they aren't tanking now, because A, I already know why the organization, if nothing else, will never outwardly make it clear that they're tanking. And also they have Luca. I'm not asking why they're not tanking now. No, I get it. But I'm asking what makes you confident in your ability to fast track a team that can contend like ASA, F&P, with the Thunder and the Spurs.

Starting point is 00:20:33 And Rob's answer of, we've got the superstar, and that's a big piece of it. And he is correct. But also, we got to thread a needle by his own admission. That I thought was really interesting and revealing. It doesn't mean it's impossible to pull off the needle thread, but it does mean this is not going to be easy, particularly when you take into account the Lakers, the options in front of them, which aren't awful,

Starting point is 00:21:04 but they're not vast and endless either. It is, they are in a tough spot. And basically every move that's, they make is it's similar to the series they just played. Every move that they make needs to be spot on. And, you know, if they are going to trade those three draft picks, for example, they need to make sure that the players that they trade those draft picks for are really good. You can't miss on whatever that trade is. You know, we talked on Tuesday afternoon about, I'm sorry, Monday afternoon about Jared Vanderbilt.

Starting point is 00:21:49 Like, would you use picks to try to get rid of Vando? I mean, on the one hand, you'd love to be able to open up that roster spot. But on the other hand, you can't, you know, that is a very painful way when you need that to upgrade the roster in other ways. And so, you know, if they use the 25th pick themselves this year, they need to pick a player that if not this year is a contributor in the next year. year or two, you know, by year three is a solid rotation player, which is not always easy to find it, 25.

Starting point is 00:22:25 Like, but you can't have another JHS. You can't have another, uh, Dalton. Like, you need to pick players that work. You need to buy your way back into the second round and pick a player that can help you in a year or two. That's surprised, like they just, you know, your minimum pay, your minimum guys that you sign have to be good. You have to make sure you extend your own guys and don't do another Jared Vanderbilt deal or, another deal like that, where you're just like,

Starting point is 00:22:50 this guy's, you know, Gabe Vincent, we're going to have to, you know, what do we do about, like, can't have any of that. And so I will, yeah, there is one thing that is different now, because there's a lot of people, because Alex Caruso went ham

Starting point is 00:23:05 in game one, and had a lot of people remembering when the Lakers let Caruso go. Have they ever forgotten, Brian? I certainly have really forgotten. I don't think I've, I was on vacation when they let that, when that happened. I did like a 20 minute solo rant for, I don't even know where we were posting these things.

Starting point is 00:23:27 I don't remember it anymore. But I was so angry and like flabbergasted that they did this. And I just, and everybody's like, you calm down, man. You just like, you're like letting the way. No, we tried to tell you all. It was a really big deal. They did the wrong. They did a bad thing.

Starting point is 00:23:45 And now everybody agrees. But there is one thing that I think at least is different about how the Lakers operate then versus how they operate going forward. And I'll explain what that is next. Locked on Lakers is brought to you by Quo. Spring is a natural reset point. And there's one thing that can quietly cost businesses money. It is messy communications.

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Starting point is 00:25:28 But in a couple seasons, the fact that they picked him up essentially for peanuts. He's a first round. Philly got a first round pick out of it. He was, but, you know, they did. It's more the way Darry said that they sold them,

Starting point is 00:25:45 that they basically sold high on McCain. It's like, they didn't get up a lot. together. But like, you know, the Spurs got 44 minutes out of Julian Champani in this game. Like, he is playing a critical role on this team in that rotation. And so, like, you know, you need to find guys like that. He was undrafted in 2022. Like, you know, the Lakers have done that before. I mean, hello, Austin Reeves, Alex Caruso. Like, they've got a track record. of that, but you need to be, like, those are the guys, too, that come in and, you know, the AJ

Starting point is 00:26:25 Mitchells of the world that, you know, make it so you can replenish and find, you know, particularly for the Lakers, find avenues towards contributing players in your rotation that can play for you at a deeply discounted rate. And that's, you know, when you don't have a lot of draft picks to the point you were making when you asked this question of Rob, when you don't have a lot of draft picks and Lakers have given away so many second round picks, it's hard to keep track of to try to undo some of their mistakes. And you don't have a lot of first round picks. You have to find cost control players who are essentially the opposite of Jared Vanderbilt.

Starting point is 00:27:03 Jared Vanderbilt gives, you know, is a $12.5 million player next year who gives you $3.5 million worth of value. You need to find the $2 million player who gives you $11 million of value. And like so go ahead. And then I'll make the other point I was going to. I was just going to say this is where. you know, Tony Bennett and whoever else is brought in for scouting

Starting point is 00:27:24 for this team. This is why they... Not that Tony Bennett. This is where they're going to have to really make their money and also prove the Lakers correct for having let

Starting point is 00:27:41 Jesse Bus go and like his whole department. And if you ask Joey and Jesse and, you know, we heard this when they were let go and obviously this is their version of events and I think they would be the first to admit they are biased because it was their situation

Starting point is 00:27:58 but the last couple draft classes that have not worked out for the Lakers have been the ones where they were cut out of the loop or their voices mattered less and if you want to look at the more successful stories for the Lakers on either the draft or undrafted or development front,

Starting point is 00:28:22 that is when Joey and Jesse had a larger voice. So again, it is up to the new people and hope, you know, in a wider front office, the two new, yes, two new assistant GMs,

Starting point is 00:28:35 all of that stuff. Resources need to be a part of shrinking this gap between the Lakers and these other two teams. And that's where I was getting that. When I was talking about like, what's different now? I mean, on the on the downside what's different now is the CBA is is more challenging than it was before it is more

Starting point is 00:28:56 difficult for a team to maneuver in the way that the Lakers need to with very restrictive cap problems like if you go over the second apron it's not just oh mark walter's got to spend tons of money or this or that or whatever it's you can't do certain things you can't make certain trades you can't sign certain players it becomes really really problematic to operate in those constrained circumstances. But what the Lakers have now, that they don't have then, somebody asked why did the Lakers let Caruso go? Whose decision was that?

Starting point is 00:29:34 The answer is ultimately Jeannie, because the Lakers let Caruso go because they didn't want to pay for it. They didn't think they needed to. They didn't think they wanted to. And ultimately, it was a money decision. And the Lakers shouldn't be making. money and a bad basketball or right it was a money combination but it was a combination of money and if we have to choose we're going to choose tail and horton tucker which just turned out to be a

Starting point is 00:29:59 mistake but it was the the bigger flaw in the right why do you need to choose between that we assumed that when they did the westbrook thing because it was so ridiculous that you are going to go you're not going to spare any expense like you're you're bringing everything back to make sure you You don't have any holes. And of course, that's not what they did. Mark Walter isn't going to operate in that way. If the better basketball choices, ideally, you know, hey, Mark, we'd love to bring them both back, whatever the next version of this decision is going to be. Mark Walter will say, bring them both back.

Starting point is 00:30:37 If it costs me an extra $25 million in luxury taxes next year, you got to make sure, you know, we're going to be able to maneuver and keep you. You tell me that. and all it cost me is money, spend the money. You talk about being able to find the next Julian Champany, if you're, you know, the Lakers version of that, the next Alex Caruso, the next Austin Reeves. You know what you need for that? Scouts, scouts everywhere, scouts, scouts all over the universe,

Starting point is 00:31:05 Mark Walter will pay for that. The Lakers famously did quite well in these things, but it wasn't because the department was big. Now they're going to have a big department. now they're going to have the infrastructure, now they're going to be able to keep guys healthy. Every ancillary thing that you can do to try to make a team competitive. And as you say, Andy, to close the gap on a group like the Thunder, like the Spurs, whatever you can do where the spending of money on infrastructure can have an impact on that,

Starting point is 00:31:37 the Lakers will spend money now to do those things. That is a big difference between now and that. Yeah. I mean, Kelden Johnson, the sixth man of the year for the Spurs, he was a 29th pick. A.J. Mitchell, the story goes that Sam Presti and the gang, they were actually at the game that they saw A.J. Mitchell to scout somebody else. But they noticed Mitchell and they were like, damn, this kid looks really good. This kid looks like he can play. They picked him in the second round. and he very quickly has turned into an extremely valuable part of a rotation that's going to make it possible.

Starting point is 00:32:20 I realize they're not apples to apples positional comps, but it makes it possible to let a Lou Dort go or to maybe let Isaiah Hartenstein go or Isaiah Joe. You flip him basically to save money. He's a, I believe, an $11 million expiring deal. Another guy, by the way, that they signed off the store. scrap heap because he was in Philadelphia before. Yep, yep, exactly. You know, the, the Thunder did that with, you know, Isaiah Hartenstein. They didn't pick him up, who was a second round pick to begin with, but they didn't pick him up at his highest value possible. You know, they were the ones who truly first discovered Alex Caruso. They didn't, he didn't flourish under

Starting point is 00:33:04 the OKC, whatever their G League club is called the way he did with the Lakers. But they know. noticed him. Like they saw something. And they recognized the need to get him back. Right. Exactly. Like, you know, big Jalen Williams was a second round pick. You can find guys who can play in this league.

Starting point is 00:33:26 And that's, again, some of the issues I have with the way Rob frame this. It's not just about finding the superstar. I know the Lakers, that is what they focus on, even in a league that is superstar-driven. and they focus on that, I think, sometimes to the expense of building a team out. These other places matter too. Your depth matters. Look at the way JJ very clearly at his ex-intervie was making it as painfully obvious as he could. I needed more dudes who could play.

Starting point is 00:34:03 Yeah. They got to find him. Can I give you one more thing that I think, I think, it was not guaranteed. yet, but that teams like Oklahoma City and San Antonio have that I think the Lakers are building towards is a program. You have, obviously, you know, the Spurs change coaches because Pop can't do it anyway. But you have the same system. You have the same R.C. Buford.

Starting point is 00:34:30 You know, there's an ethos there. There's Tim Duncan sitting behind the bench at every game. Like, there is a through line that goes through this organization and a stability. and Mitch Johnson's going to be there for a long time. This is just how this franchise operates. The Thunder have, because of Sam Presti, mostly, but, like, you know, Mark Daniel is going to be there for a long time. And, you know, Dagnon was going to be there a while.

Starting point is 00:34:56 Yeah. And, like, but again, you have a GM who's sort of got this through line that goes through it. And they built whatever. The Lakers, whether it be, I, at the very least, I'm confident that J. is going to be around for a while. And maybe it's Rob, maybe it's somebody else down the line, or maybe it's Rob and with a lot of support. But the Lakers also need to be able to build a program

Starting point is 00:35:21 because you can't plug in the Champennies and the Joe's and the Mitchells and the Jalen Williams and those guys if what you need because your playing style changes every two and a half years because you're firing your coach and you're getting a different guy or whatever, The guy you drafted in, you know, three years ago to play for Darwin Ham, you know, now can't, because he doesn't quite work in JJ's system. Or Frank Vogel, you pick this guy and now he's different in Darwin and now it's like you can't operate that way. You need to have some stability so that when you need to develop players, you can develop them for specific purposes with a specific system in mind. And so the Lakers need to find some stability here.

Starting point is 00:36:08 And I think JJ, again, I think JJ over the first two years has been quite encouraging in that regard. There's still some questions about Rob. But that's another thing that the Lakers can build that these teams have that they have not had for a while. It would be really nice. And again, ASAPP, if you want to give the thunder and spurs who appear like they're going to own the Western Conference, for the better part of the remaining decade and maybe the first couple years after that, basically going through each other.

Starting point is 00:36:47 The road's going to be through one or both of those teams if you want to get to the finals. And you've got Luca in his prime. He ain't old, but he ain't young. There ain't no time to waste now. And you've got to nail this off season. Locked on YouTube. He's bringing out with over 38,000 subscribers to the

Starting point is 00:37:08 channel. We'll see everyone next time.

Locked On Lakers - Daily Podcast On The Los Angeles Lakers - How Can the Lakers Close the Gap Between Them, San Antonio and Oklahoma City?

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