LOS ANGELES_It started with a dunk, a classic LeBron James one-handed tomahawk slam.
Eighty-two games ago, James' began his time with the Los Angeles Lakers with the perfect play, a dunk, the easiest two points in basketball. One possession later, he did it again, another right-handed smash, sending his teammates on the bench into a frenzy and the Lakers' fans who traveled to Portland into euphoria.
It looked so easy _ the sport's simplest recipe _ take an NBA team, add the game's best player and wait for the wins to pile up. Only the Lakers didn't win that day in Portland. Things were never as simple as those slam dunks on the team's first night.
Tuesday, all of it ended, James on the bench in a black suit watching the Lakers lose, again, 104-101 to the Trail Blazers, the team's president, Magic Johnson, headed for the exits, Luke Walton still dangling by the slimmest thread, owner Jeanie Buss not in her usual seats, and the team's general manager, Rob Pelinka, having his relationship with Johnson publicly dissected with few platitudes.
While trying to explain his relationship with Pelinka, who was hired by Buss to pair with Johnson in the front office as general manager in 2017, Johnson said he didn't have any problems with Kobe Bryant's former agent. He also said he went into the job without really knowing him.
"The relationship with Rob is fine," Johnson said. "I just didn't know him and he didn't know me. And we got put together. We had to get to know each other and learn how to work with each other. We did that. But, you know, it has nothing to do with me stepping down."
And when he was asked if Pelinka was the right man to continue on with being the team's general manager, Johnson didn't offer an endorsement.
"That's a decision that Jeanie has to make," he said. "I worked well with him. I had no problems with him."
But, as soon as he said that, Johnson mentioned that Pelinka might have some "baggage" around the league, at least according to his "agent friends" that called the Lakers' former president.
That baggage _ bad feelings from his time competing with other agents and perceptions of poor communication with other general managers around the league _ was something Johnson didn't take with him on his way out of Staples Center.
It also was clear that Johnson intended to fire coach Luke Walton, but seemingly quit, in part, because he felt Buss would be hurt by the decision.
"I had more fun on the other side than on this side because now, tomorrow, I would have to affect someone's livelihood and their life," Johnson said, seemingly referring to Walton's job status. "And I thought about that. That's not fun for me. That's not who I am. And then I don't want to put her in the middle of us, even though she said, 'Hey, you do what you want to do.' I know she has great love for him. And great love for me."
So now Buss has to figure out what to do with an unexpectedly open vacancy at the head of her basketball operations. She has to weigh whether Pelinka, who apparently she paired with Johnson without her former president's approval, actually has too much baggage to be "put" with another president of basketball operations. And, she now has to figure out if Walton, who has two years left (one guaranteed), deserves to be paired with another president of basketball operations that didn't hire him.
The enormity of it all was on full display in Johnson's scattered final words as a Lakers' employee.
He lamented not being able to Tweet when players like Russell Westbrook, Dwyane Wade and D'Angelo Russell have on-court success. He said he was unfairly cast as the bad guy when he expressed a willingness to work with Philadelphia's Ben Simmons only if the Lakers, the 76ers and the NBA were all on board with it.
He said he had no regrets and wouldn't do anything differently. He said that if things weren't going so well, he would probably have stayed.
He said the Lakers were a player away from a trip to the Western Conference Finals on a night when the team lost its 45th game _ the Lakers' sixth losing season in a row.
"Did anybody see this team?" Johnson asked. "Everything is in place."
Johnson called Tuesday "a great moment for the organization."
And maybe it will be. Maybe Johnson's departure empowers Buss to start over with a more experienced front office. Maybe it leads to the team beefing up its infrastructure, adding to its scouting and analytics departments. Maybe, like the Clippers have across town, Buss assembles a team of assistant general managers and advisors to help whoever is in that job.
All of those hopes have some corners of Lakers nation agreeing with Johnson _ that this is a great moment.
But it's also a reminder of the instability that's plagued the team since the death of Dr. Jerry Buss. The Lakers head into a pivotal summer without their lead recruiter, possibly without a coach and with a general manager bruised on his way out by his former partner. Their star is no longer invincible, a groin injury sidelining him for the longest extended stretch in his 16-season career.
Tuesday night, in the season's final seconds, Portland forward Maurice Harkless floated unguarded to the right corner, and drilled a buzzer-beating three to punctuate what started that first night in Portland.
James' first two baskets in October made it seem like everything was going to be easy. And with the season now done, a franchise-altering night makes it seem like getting everything right could be really hard.
