Plaschke: Rob Pelinka and JJ Redick should be safe under the Dodgers regime … for now
Memo to Mark Walter:
Check your Swing.
Now that you are the owner of the majority of the Lakers, everyone expects that you can hit their two most important leaders in the hope of transforming the basketball team into your baseball team, but you should instead act initially in terms of happening.
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Take a shot.
Keep Rob Pelinka and JJ Redick in their work … for now.
Agreed, this could be a difficult call, and certainly there could be a temptation of immediately the employees of the two Lakers who embody more the incestuous decisions that have dragged the organization of the championship once it moves in boring mediocrity.
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Pelinka, president of the basketball operations and general manager, was hired eight years ago because he was Kobe Bryant’s agent and confidant.
Reddick, the coach head, was hired last summer because it was Lebron James’ podcast.
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Neither men came in their current positions with strong qualifications. Both men were beneficiaries of a culture of the post-Magri buss in which his daughter Jeanie would have surrounded himself with friends and family.
It is a culture that has led to the out of measure decision -making roles for artists of the caliber of Linda and Kurt Rambis. It is a culture that is diametrically opposed to meritocracy that has made the other glamorous team of this city so great.
Now that the Dodgers have practically swallowed the entire Lakers, it could be a obvious conclusion that Pelinka and Redick would have been among the first to disappear.
Memo to Mark Walter:
Mark Walter, the Dodgers control owner, has recently become majority stakeholders in the Lakers. (Emma McIntyre / Getty Images)
Wait for the third party.
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Both Pelinka and Reddick have gained the opportunity to show their strengths in a new system where there will certainly be an increase in scouting, advanced analysis and a new professionalism for an infrastructure that had been difficult for any officer.
Ned Colletti was the general manager of the Dodgers when the Walter group bought the team in the spring of 2012. He lasted two more seasons, the Guggenheim partners who pour money into the team and gave him every possibility to be successful before shooting him.
Pelinka deserves at least half of that possibility.
Don Mattingly was the manager when Walter bought the team. He lasted four more seasons, finally separating after the 2015 season.
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Redick deserves at least a part of that leash.
Although both men have been seen as superimposed both in this space and by the NBA professionals through the landscape, everyone has done quite well not to be downloaded the moment when Walter walks through the door.
Start with Pelinka. You know he has an NBA championship in his curriculum, right? While Alex Caruso fired the 2020 title like Phony last week after winning another ring with Oklahoma City, that first one still matters, and Pelinka still deserves credit for having supervised him.
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Yes, Pelinka is the villain who ruined everything, letting Caruso walked as the title team willing to acquire Russell Westbrook. But it is perhaps also the only manager of the NBA history to acquire three players like Lebron James, Luka Doncic and Anthony Davis.
He had a lot of help there – Magic Johnson recruited James and James recruited Davis and Nico Harrison brought him Doncic – but he was still the last gear in making him happen.
Pelinka also designed the splendid signature of the free unwanted agent who was Austin Reaves, which led the Lakers to end up this season as a third seed in the West.
He does not shoot a decision maker the same year in which his reconstructed team ends third in the most competitive basketball neighborhood. He does not shoot a decision maker two years after his team reached the finals of the Western Conference. And certainly do not shoot a decision maker until you know what’s going on with his best employee.
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It seems clear that James is about to opt for his contract from $ 52.6 million this week and remains with the team – and his son Bronny – for at least another season. In this case, Pelinka should have the opportunity to add the protector of the circle that he tried to maximize Doncic and give James another opportunity on a ring.
However, if James unexpectedly refuses the money to look for better opportunities for the title elsewhere – it is not a bad decision for the Lakers, honestly – the chaos of the roster that follows will not be the right time to make a change on the top.
In any case, the situation is fluid enough to allow Pelinka to see it.
The same goes for Redick, who did an admirable job in his first regular season before melt in the playoffs.
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Of course, some would have taken into consideration his series of games of the first round against the Minnesota Timberwolves a flammable offense, particularly in game 4 when he used the same five players for an entire second half. No favor was done when he later reacted to the criticisms of that decision by seizing the question of a journalist before stalcating from a pre – -match press conference.
During the most important moments of the season, Redick was above his head. But as he admitted, he will learn, grow, will improve and has done quite well during the regular season to believe him.
Reddick trained a team before Doncic’s arrival and Davis’ departure. He later trained another team. He skillfully managed both teams as he intelligently disarmed the potentially divisive distraction that was Bronny. Redick also authorized Reaves to become a third legitimate threat before Reaves joined his coach in an act of disappearance of the playoffs.
All this brings this surprisingly sugary piece to the next week, the beginning of the summer madness of the NBA and the pressure is active.
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Piaccia or not, Pelinka and Redick are a couple now, a tandem combined with the appearance of a new owner with new expectations.
Pelinka needs to find a great man who can help take them deep into the playoffs. Regardless of who acquires Pelinka, Redick must organize Doncic and make everything work.
They will not have many possibilities under a new Dodger regime that requires prolonged success, but deserve at least a possibility of exploiting the enormous changes that this new group of property will certainly create in returning the largest basketball franchise to new glories.
Memo to Mark Walter:
Keep the names of Pelinka and Reddick in the training board.
In pencil.
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This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.