Locked On Lakers - Daily Podcast On The Los Angeles Lakers - How Does Lakers' Offseason Stack Up Against the Rest of the NBA?

Episode Date: August 6, 2026

The great David Aldridge at The Athletic has a review of the summer's activity around the NBA, ranking teams by how successful an offseason they had. That doesn't mean teams finishing higher are better overall, just that the offseason was relatively speaking more productive. The Lakers came in at 11th, which seems pretty fair, all things considered.  On the one hand, you can argue that in raw terms, they might not be quite as good as they were last season (this is, more or less, a referendum on the impact of losing LeBron James, because there are areas where the Lakers have definitely improved, like at starting center). On the other hand, if you're trying to envision what a long term vision for the squad might look like in the Luka Doncic era, that's a lot more clear now. The Lakers are also a lot younger, and seem to have hit on their first round pick in Cam Carr.  Overall, there's a lot to feel good about!  Does Aldridge get his evaluation right?  The answer does in some ways get to a fairly pervasive criticism of Rob Pelinka's work, hsitorically and this season, about a proclivity for player options. Sometimes, they've been mystifying. This year? Maybe not?  Finally, Luka finished in the top 10 for NBA2K's 3-point ratings. This is cearly not meant to be a reflection of raw percentages or efficiency, because Doncic doesn't measure up in that regard. But swag? Audaciousness? That he's got in excess. So what was 2K factoring in? And what do things look like when you dig a little deeper into his percentages?    HOSTS: Andy and Brian Kamenetzky    SEGMENT 1: The Athletic looks at LA's offseason.    SEGMENT 2: Why the Lakers gave away the contracts they did.    SEGMENT 3: Luka and NBA2K.    Photo Credit: Jesse Johnson-Imagn Images   Everydayer Club If you never miss an episode, it’s time to make it official. Join the Locked On Everydayer Club and get ad-free audio, access to our members-only Discord, and more — all built for our most loyal fans. Click here to learn more and join your team’s community: https://lockedonpodcasts.com/everydayerclub   Support Us By Supporting Our Sponsors! IndeedListeners of this show get a $75 Sponsored Job Credit to help give your job the premium placement it deserves at http://Indeed.com/podcast Cozy EarthHead to https://cozyearth.com and use my code LOCKEDONfor an exclusive 20%.   BetterhelpThis episode is sponsored by BetterHelp.Sign up and get 10% off at https://BetterHelp.com/LOCKEDONNBA. FanDuel Today's episode is brought to you by FanDuel. Join all the action at https://FANDUEL.COMto play Daily Dingers and make your free pick on who’s hitting a homer this MLB season.   FANDUEL DISCLAIMER: 21+ in select states. First online real money wager only. Bonus issued as nonwithdrawable free bets that expires in 14 days. Restrictions apply. See terms at sportsbook.fanduel.com. Gambling Problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER or visit FanDuel.com/RG (CO, IA, MD, MI, NJ, PA, IL, VA, WV), 1-800-NEXT-STEP or text NEXTSTEP to 53342 (AZ), 1-888-789-7777 or visit ccpg.org/chat (CT), 1-800-9-WITH-IT (IN), 1-800-522-4700 (WY, KS) or visit ksgamblinghelp.com (KS), 1-877-770-STOP (LA), 1-877-8-HOPENY or text HOPENY (467369) (NY), TN REDLINE 1-800-889-9789 (TN) Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The athletic evaluates every team's offseason. Plus, Luca Donchich proves that NBA 2K is just a giant popularity contest. We'll explain. You are Locked-on Lakers. Your daily Los Angeles Lakers podcast, part of the Locked-on Podcast Network. Your team every day. Thanks, everybody's shopping by Locked on Lakers. Brian Kamenetsky, Andy Kamenetsky.

We'll get to this star treatment, we shall say, video game style for Luca Donchich. in a moment. It is kind of a fun and entertaining story. But first, Andy, let's talk about NBA offseason, David Aldridge, the great NBA writer, a legend in the field.

He, writing for The Athletic, has taken time to kind of rank everybody's off season, essentially by productivity. It's not an evaluation of where they stand relative to each other in the NBA, like the second team is better in the 16, we're better than the 8th team. It's like, how'd you do this offseason?

Yeah, to put it exactly the way David phrased it, he said, quote, these rankings ask and try to answer one question, is the team better now than it was at the end of the season? And he takes into account everything from free agency to the draft, the trades, coaching hires, fires, I think, in the case of the Lakers, the influence of ownership could be a category as well. You know, there's going to be some degree of, you know, contextual, I'm trying to think of the right word for this, but, you know, contextual subjectivity. Contextual context. I was going to say contextual subjectivity in terms of how he is defining better now than

they were at the end of the season. Like he might say that a team taking a step back is in the long term better than where they were at the end of the season, even if they might have been a little bit better of a team at the end of this season, but quite possibly not going anywhere. So all of these different subjective type definitions, but as you mentioned before, David's a legend. He knows what he's doing. And his perspective on this was really interesting. Yeah. And essentially, he has the Lakers ranked 11th in terms of where they land in these offseason rankings. you know, obviously going through the litany of players that have come and gone off this roster.

And, you know, the, the Lakers section of added and lost is long. There's a lot of people when you start to really look at the turnover of the roster written down that way, it's quite a thing. And so, you know, you see all that. And overall, he was pretty complimentary of what they did. The biggest thing he focused on, Andy, which I thought was interesting, was just whether or not the Kessler swing, which he calls a, quote, big, big swing is the right one and one justified in terms of the amount of stuff that they gave up. Yeah, I'll read everything he wrote because that is a big part that he focused on, but wasn't even the thing. thing that jumped out at me the most. But he said, quote, Los Angeles moving so much draft inventory for Kessler's a big, big swing. I'm not sure he'll ever consistently score enough to justify the

deal, but he's really good protecting the rim and screening. And Luka will find him for lobs. And while Kessler's salary is a bit overcooked, it's not ridiculous. And Los Angeles desperately needed to add someone who can actually guard opposing players. Similarly, Matisse Thival's calling card remains as perimeter D. Mamu Kalashvili can shoot. Car, Cameron Carr, can be sneaky good. The Lakers are still not real threats to OKC or the Spurs, but the franchise's long-term strategy is coherent now. Every acquisition must serve Luca Dantz, which is unique set of skills. The part that jumped out of me most was the idea that the long-term strategy is coherent now. and it mirrors something I've been saying a lot throughout this offseason,

which is the roster is not perfect. It has its flaws. It has areas that still need to be strengthened. It is a transaction cycle or two and reps and cohesion away from becoming the team that they want it to be. But it makes sense. And it makes sense in ways that I think the last couple of seasons worth of rosters have not, which makes sense because they were pivoting unexpectedly from a team built around LeBron and Anthony Davis to a team built around Luca Donchich.

That's going to be a very different build. It's not just that. I mean, the issue was also because even before the, you know, the, the Luca gift that they were given and genuinely was a massive bailout for this organization. That was actually the mana from heaven. Not KCP. It was actually Luca. No good respect to Cantavius,

Caldwell Pope. But it's also, too, like the Lakers had been in this cycle because they were trying to figure out, how are we going to do this? Like, what are we going to do of constantly keeping optionality in the form of cap space? And like only cap space.

Like this was the thing that they were preserving. They were going to preserve cap space for 2026. They were going to preserve it for 2020. They needed the flexibility to go get their next star, all these other things. And so you were on this series of one-year contracts, you know, particularly like after they were scared off by the failure of the Jared Vanderbilt contract. You know, they tended toward these short deals, trying to keep flexibility, trying not to get too committed into something so that they could make these big free agent splashes. And good strategy or bad, and we certainly had our criticism. of it one of the things that it just definitionally makes impossible is creating any kind of

coherent long-term plan because you are what you are limiting yourself only to people that you can keep at a certain number for a very short time and most of those people are going to leave and also just doesn't work and you know for all of the criticism and this is something maybe we can we can start talking about now and talk a little bit about after the break. Two, I understand some of the criticisms of the front office for including another round of player options with like in three years, the Lakers offseason, it's going to be real goofy while they sit around waiting to figure out who's going to pick up their options and who isn't. But in the in the shorter term, they needed to get guys under contract for a while.

If you like Quentin Grimes, make sure you keep him and you get him and you can keep him for a while. If you like Mamu and believe in that the potential that his numbers seem to suggest, sign him and you make sure you can keep him for a little bit. You need to be right about guys, but you also can't build any kind of continuity if 75% of your roster is different every year. Well, also, too, in the specific case of Mamu and Grimes and Sexton, who is a player option, but it's a shorter deal, I believe it is. Kessler's under contract for a while too. Right. Well, I was going to say those three guys, and it was leading to Walker Kessler, I don't know this for a fact, but it would make sense to me. And I've run it by other people and they think it also makes sense.

They were going after Walker Kessler as their big fish. Walker Kessler was a restricted free agent. restricted free agent deals, whether you end up putting out an offer sheet that another team doesn't sign, or as it turns out, is a sign and trade that ultimately the incumbent team agrees to, those are complicated and they can take time. And they needed to get Grimes and Mamu and Sexton, guys that they clearly targeted early off the board for the rest of the league, in a free agency class that was not considered particularly strong. and if you start then pairing it down to the free agents that are any good that the Lakers could get within their price range, that pool shrinks that much more.

So I am guessing, and again, I think it makes sense, if nothing else, as a qualified guess, that part of the way Rob Polinkett got those guys to take themselves off the board that quickly into free agency, because before it was official, you know, the news broke that they had agreed to terms, There have been whispers of them targeting Grimes and whispers of them targeting Samu. They're the favorite for Mammu. They're the favorite of Brian. Exactly. So that's part of what you do to get those guys to take themselves off the board. You say early on, we're going to make this player friendly.

Did Rob potentially go too far in that direction? You could argue it. But I understand why. I get why he did it. Let's talk a little bit next about. sort of, you know, there's the where from here kind of aspect of in some of the other players that David Aldridge mentioned as well. But then a very entertaining story involving NBA 2K and some, in my opinion, questionable rating of a particular Luca Donger skill set. We'll get to it next.

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And if you see a post-purchase survey, please mention you heard about it right here, cozyearth.com. It's interesting to me, too, that kind of where Aldridge turned after, you know, he did mention Mamma Kahlishvili and all that. Some of the lesser heralded additions, the Lakers made, you know, a minimum deal for Matisse Stivel. They talked about Cameron Carr and stuff like that. And, you know, those are guys.

Like if you're looking for ways that the Lakers might kind of exceed expectations, I think expectations reasonably are somewhere in the top six, probably around the same number of wins this year, last year, assuming, you know, good enough health to allow that to happen. But, you know, if you're looking for, ways that the Lakers could exceed expectations a little bit. It's somebody like Carr is a much quicker hit into the rotation than, you know, rookies often are, even rookies that teams are really high on that are considered big projects. You know, he comes in and it's like, okay,

you know what? There's a 15 minute a night player who's really giving them good minutes. Thibel plays 65 games instead of the 25. I think a lot of people are worried that, you know, it could be this year just based on the last couple seasons. You know, you get Zaire Williams in a situation like, kind of like Gary Payton Jr. was in with the Warriors a few years ago. We bounced around a little bit and this and that, finds the right team who can use him in the right way, and all of a sudden he becomes a really viable NBA player.

Like those are the things. A lot of this is on the coaching staff. These are the types of things that do Thero finds a really nice role that he can thrive in. some of this is the players obviously but a lot of it is the coaching staff understanding the way these parts fit together and how to take their players particularly their young players

who may not have a fully developed range of things that they can do and putting them in situations where they can give them quality minutes and protect against some of their shortcomings. The comp that I always use when I'm talking about this with Lucas

specifically is Derek Jones Jr., who the year that they went to the finals, Derek Jones Jr., he was there on a veterans minimum deal. I think it's one of the best veterans minimum deals of like the last five or so years. If Matisse Thibel or Zaire Williams or pie in the sky, both outperform those veteran minimum deals. And I don't mean just like they're signed at three-ish-mill

and they feel like they are $5 million players or $6 million. But if they feel close to double-digit value, you players, that alone is going to make this team considerably better. Like, obviously, you need crimes to perform the way they expect. You need Mahmoo to perform. You really need Walker Kessler. Austin Reeves has to keep improving. Like, all of that stuff matters, and the investment in those guys is bigger.

But I would not sleep at all on the potential effect of guys like Thibyl or Thibyl or, Thibble or Williams or you get into Carr or Thero. And the reason that matters is because those are the lower price salary slots. And the effect on a team when guys outperform those level of contracts is massive. Right. Because that's really gets, it's not the, you know, Vanderbilt, for example, the problem with him on this, you know, the effect on the roster isn't just you have a guy signed to a long term deal. So you have a guy slotted. particularly now, you know, to that, you know, 10 to 15 million dollars, which as we've learned

in this free agency is where a lot of pretty decent players are starting to end up, you have a guy slotted into that place on your roster, filling up that a spot like that on your roster, who either, you know, not to, you know, relitigate it, but can't, isn't going to play or isn't seen as an automatic big part of your rotation for one reason or another. And like, that is a massive drag to have, you know, and you combine that with Dalton Connect, who particularly the way this roster is configured is a drag at his roster spot. You know, Jaden Hardy is a little bit of a different animal because he came both as a way to facilitate the signing of all these other players.

And he did come with second round picks. Like they got some stuff in return for taking on that salary. And so the Lakers roster is better sorted now money to playing time, at least you hope, than it was than it has been in certain years past. But Maxi Claiba last year, call me cynical Andy. I don't think they got, what was it, $11 million worth of value out of him. Unless you really value DHO screens or ATO screens, no, they did not. The other thing, though, with DA's write-up,

that also jumped out of me that I think Laker fans should like. The remaining, because the Lakers were 11th, there's 10 teams left and there's been an installment. The remaining 10 teams, and this is not an order because we don't yet know what they are, the Thunder, the Clippers, the Sixers, the Raptors, wizards, hawks, jazz, hornets, heat, Memphis. depending on what happens with the Clippers and, you know, the aspiration deal and Kauai and this,

the aspiration investigation, but the deal between the Raptors and Clippers bringing Kauai back to Toronto, if they end up backing out of that, the Raptors, because they just decide we can't wait on this through 2027 or whatever, or, you know, if there is an actual end to this investigation, and there's punishment that affects Kauai's contract and factors of this trade between the raptors and clippers, those two teams could theoretically drop down sort of retroactively by any common sense look at the offseason, which would mean the Lakers are in the top 10 for their off season and the way that their off season went, which I think is appropriate because both you and I thought within the parameters of what they realistically could do and what they needed to do,

they've had a good offseason. I think they've done fine. And, like, you know, some of it, again, is just how are we going to define? Like, over the long term, I think they've set themselves up nicely for the job of, you know, for the job sort of at hand, which is we need to recreate and reconstruct this roster around Luca. That's different than are you replacing all the talent one to one that went out the door?

And, you know, obviously that starts with LeBron, but then you figure out, you know, what about Rui? What about these other guys like is Mamu better than Rui when you take into consideration? You know passing or you know some of those other things you know rebounding energy whatever it might be is Grimes and upgrade you know especially or sexton an upgrade especially when you consider You know for most of the really comparing him to Gabe Vincent and all that kind like all of those things go into the pool But it's also really important to remember like it's been a A challenging offseason

I'll say for a lot of teams around the West. Obviously, the nuggets are still in it. Like they are trying to figure out exactly how they're going to get out of the sort of financial mess that they have decided that they're in. I mean, they could pay everybody. They're just not going to. You know, Minnesota radically overhauled their roster in ways that may work or may not, but they, at the very least, are a far less deep team than they used to be. You know, I think Houston had a perfectly nice offseason.

They should be okay, very quietly probably made their team a little better. The two teams at the top either weathered the storm, I think, in the case of Oklahoma City. And San Antonio had a really quiet and productive offseason. Everyone else in that big mix, you can look at and kind of poke at and say, like, what's going on here? And the Lakers in that context, I agree with you, did productive and sort of, directional work. You can understand what it is that they're trying to accomplish. What was it, Andy, that NBA 2K was trying to accomplish when it decided who the 10 best

three-point shooters in its video game for the 26-27 season would be? We'll explain next. This episode of Lockdowne Lakers is sponsored by BetterHelp. BetterHelp has been a widely used online therapy platform. And the focus today is just why so many people continue to use it. You can actually see what people are saying by visiting BetterHelp.com reviews where real customer reviews are updated every day. BetterHelp has an average live therapy session rating of 4.9 out of 5 based on more than 1.7 client session reviews. And hearing directly from the people

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one note about the big retreat in Serbia that's upcoming for the Lakers. Everyone's going of Serbia, Slovenia, I should say. Everyone's going and hanging out at Lucas House you know, pull out the pullout couch, a couple of people on an air mattress, so it's going to be a lot of fun for everybody. Everybody's going to go except Cam Carr, who has to attend the mandatory like rookie summit, which sucks for Cam Carr,

who I'm sure much rather be in Slovenia bonding with his teammates. So I wish there was a way around it. There isn't. It's mandatory. He has to go. and I mean, it'll be fine. But it's an opportunity and an experience, really, for a car that he's going to miss out on. Yeah.

I mean, I wonder if in a weird twisted way, Luca doing it during this period where car can't go is a form of rookie hazing. Like, he's just preventing Cameron Carr from actually attending this thing. I'm willing to bet he didn't look at the dates. I am going to say with 100% certainty, Luca had no idea. that this was the overlap, but it would be kind of funny if he was just doing like 4D rookie hazing and reading about this thing too that is very ironic in a way that kind of sucks about this, you know, orientation that they put the rookies through and topics that come up include

money management and media training and all these, you know, financial literacy, how to deal with officiating all these different things that Cameron calls. because he was raised by an NBA father, probably has heard all of these things a million times is totally prepared for and probably has a better head on his shoulders with this stuff than some players who've been in the league for several years. And yet he's going to be stuck at this thing.

Yeah, it's like when you get to college, like your freshman year, you can place out of like 100-level math. I feel you should be able to do that as a rookie. The other fun story, for today. We all love Lukadjic. We all appreciate the way he can go nuclear from beyond the arc. NBA 2K in their new 2627 edition of the game has the top 10 three-point shooters by their numerical ranking. It starts obviously with staff at 99. I think we all can accept that.

Con Canupple is two, Duncan Robinson three, Luke Kennard four, Damien Lill Lillard, five, Anthony Edwards, six. Then Luca, at seven, Katie, Max Struce, and Sam Merrill finishing that out. I think Andy that this might just be a big popularity contest, because that may be a little bit overcooked, as David Aldridge used that word earlier in the show, for Luca's three-point ranking.

Well, it's interesting with Luca, and I'll get into some of the discoveries, but it actually sent me down a rabbit hole of kind of examining Luca Donchich as a three-point shooter. But obviously from a pure three-point percentage perspective, Luca does not deserve to be this high. Like he is a good three-point shooter. He is not a great three-point shooter. He has the lowest clip among anyone in that top 10 for NBA 2K.

He is three-point percentage ranked 97th in the league last year. nobody in the league took more threes, in Lucas case 10.8, at a lower connection rate. The next lowest was Lamello, who was very close, both in the amount of threes per game and the percentage. But what's interesting about it, and I think in some ways this explains where Luca is at on this list, beyond just the fact that he's Luca Donjic. Both Lamello and Luca, they are very high when you look at just audaciousness, of your shots, like the audaciousness of the threes, their willingness and at times proficiency with the step back in particular,

and how both of them, when they start getting on crazy three-point roles, which both of them can, those are the three-pointers that become the nightmare of defenses. Because when Luca really is on a heater with that step-back three, he does become pretty damn close to unguardable, and it really does open up a lot for the Laker offense. But that said, it is a very specific part of what can make Luca a dangerous three-point shooter. Like per synergies, you know, metrics, his points per attempt on threes, 64th percentile, it's considered good, which runs the gamut. There's excellent, very good, good, average, below average and poor.

So again, Luca's good. He is not elite as a three-point shooter, I think, overall. It made his inclusion here very interesting. Like I said, you react to this. And then I did go down a bit of a rabbit hole, just kind of thinking about Luca Donchich, the three-point shooter. It was 100% based on theatricality. Like, there's just, Luke, if the ranking is top,

10 cool three-point shooters three-pointers with swag but like it's just I mean it's it's a fun right it's NBA 2k doesn't matter but it's it was one of these sort of fun things like well we're really basing this on and we can't have a top 10 list that you're putting out there for you know social media and all these other things that's filled with the Sam Merrill's and Duncan Robinson's and Max Struces exclusively that does not generate these sort of social media buzz that I think the video game folks are looking for. I don't know about that, I'll be honest. I don't take these things terribly.

Seriously, it's just kind of funny to think about it in the context of how Luca shoots three-pointers, which like the word audaciousness that you used before, I think, is a great one. And it's part of what makes the Luca experience so much fun as a fan. Yeah. And, I mean, I'll be honest. the NBA 2K ratings and the numbers, they get so much traction and attention anyway that I don't think they put Luca at that number

specifically just to get eyeballs. I actually don't because I don't think it's necessary. They could have just Steph and then nine other three-point shooters and people are going to pay attention because people who love NBA 2K, and by the way, that includes the actual NBA players themselves, they take this bleep. They take this bleep.

Deadly, seriously. I don't know enough about the game because I do not allow myself to play these games because I waste enough time as it is. I cannot afford to have... I'm being serious. I don't allow myself...

I do not allow myself a home video game system or any type of video games because I will get sucked in and I cannot afford to do that. I don't know how much they add Luca's personality and sort of that swag into the three-pointers themselves.

But, you know, the fact was in. Right. You know, the truth is, though, when Luca gets on a three-point heater, it can be like as devastating as anybody in the league when it comes to this stuff. But I started just taking a look at some of Luca's three-point numbers and some of the different breakdowns of them, like just starting thinking about it more as a three-point shooter. He took 694 threes over the course of the regular season. His most common, as one would suspect, was a stepback three. He shot 35.6% on stepbacks. Then he took 377 non-stepbacks

on the season. Pull up threes. He shot at basically the same clip, 35.8. That was almost 35% of the threes that he took. The less common, though, catching shoot threes. He took 171 of them on the season and shot him at nearly 39%. Three-pointers taken with zero dribbles, which most of them, I assume, are catch-and-shoot threes, almost 39%. He also was almost 44% on threes considered wide open. And in thinking about like the mechanics of how that works, like the catch-22 for a player like Luca who has a very high usage, but also has a lot of eyes on him in general. It is hard to get opportunities for him to have catch and shoot three point opportunities, much less clean enough to be considered wide open.

But if you can get him that, which includes, you know, it's going to require good secondary and tertiary ball movement plus good off ball movement from Luca himself. If you can find ways to do it off specific actions or unscheduled stuff, whatever, it's worth it. Like those type of shots for Luca are going to go in on a high clip. Like catch and shoot threes, if you can find more opportunities for them are really good. The way to do that is some of what the Lakers have tried to figure out this offseason,

which is ball pressure or pressure on the rim. I should say guys who can go in the paint, that's going to open up kickout opportunities. And then the last thing I found, and this is, I will say this, this is where Luca actually is kind of a legit three-point god he shot almost 39% on tight coverage threes and to put this in perspective that's better than step in that same coverage over the past two seasons like that is very very good so in that sense like audacious category well the audacious and also what I one of the things that I do

think can make Luca just a devastating offensive player, but at times a devastating three-point shooter, Luca is just a really, really good, insanely difficult shot maker. Like, Luca, how many times over the course of the season are you watching him

going like, holy, like, it's also just, he's very difficult, he's so big and he's very good at using his body that it, you know, unless you can get really up into him. And he's, you know, he's going to be able to shoot over a lot of players just because he's taller than they are bigger than they are he uses his body

uses that sort of uh little fade away the little you know the dirk leg and all these other things he's just good at all that stuff um and so a lot of tightly covered threes look are tightly covered you know know there's guy right there but they're not necessarily tightly covered in a way that impedes luka's ability to take the shot that he wants to take. So it is fun to me, but like I'm going back to something. A lot of this is style. So still fun. We'll look, maybe unpack some other 2K ratings, things as they come out over the course of the offseason.

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