While the Lakers have committed to handing the front office over to Rob Pelinka on the basketball side, that doesn’t mean the team has ruled out hiring a replacement for Magic Johnson entirely.
In a piece on The Athletic by Bill Oram and Sam Amick on Saturday, the duo reiterated that Pelinka’s in charge moving forward but that may not be set in stone.
Yet while rumblings remain that Buss might replace Johnson with an elite front office executive at some point, and with so much pressure from local and national media to conduct a comprehensive search for a new president of basketball operations who isn’t required to have deep Lakers ties, a source with knowledge of her plan insists that this front office is Pelinka’s to run. At least for now.
The piece made it clear that Pelinka is in charge and will be the man on the basketball side of things in the front office moving forward. For better or worse, the hierarchy of the front office is becoming clearer and clearer the further away from Magic Johnson’s resignation we get.
But as certain as the structure of the front office seems to be, it appears the Lakers are giving themselves an out. Hedging your bets at this stage, though, seems useless. The best teams succeed with as many bright minds in one room as possible and the Lakers are hamstringing themselves for no reason.
It’s a mistake that very likely could come back to haunt the Lakers barring the 99th percentile of success by Pelinka and the current regime. And it’s yet another sign of a front office too far stuck in its past to position itself for success in the future.
