After winning the title, it would’ve been easy for L.A. to want to run it back, but they’ve been aggressive trying to get better.
The Los Angeles Lakers will enter the 2020-21 season looking to defend the NBA championship they won just over a month ago in the Orlando Bubble, and while LeBron James and Anthony Davis will still be the starring pieces, the roster around them will look quite different. L.A.’s run through the Bubble playoffs was impressive, going 16-5 as they rolled past the Blazers, Rockets, Nuggets, and Heat en route to their first title in a decade. Such a run could have lulled them into a sense that all they needed to do to position themselves for next season was to bring back the same rotation players and add some on the periphery. However, Rob Pelinka and the Lakers front office recognized that their run to the title wasn’t perfect and also didn’t come up against the expected top teams in either conference, and with the possibility of those teams loading up to make a run at L.A., the Lakers had to be proactive. The result has been an offseason overhaul that has seen a number of contributors from last year leave L.A. and new faces brought in with the hope of raising the team’s ceiling. Gone are Rajon Rondo, Dwight Howard, Danny Green, Avery Bradley, and JaVale McGee, all of whom played fairly significant roles in the regular season, with Rondo, Green, and Howard all being key contributors in the playoffs. In their place, the Lakers have brought in Dennis Schröder, Wesley Matthews, Montrezl Harrell, and Marc Gasol, bringing a balance of savvy veterans and a touch more youth than the Lakers had a year ago, along with ensuring they re-signed Kentavious Caldwell-Pope and got Markieff Morris back on a minimum deal. What’s most interesting about the Lakers moves is they hinge on the playoff readiness of two players who, to this point, are quite unproven on that stage. Schröder’s raw production in the postseason has been fine over his last three trips since becoming a heavy rotation piece in Atlanta and OKC, but the concern lies with his shooting. Last year was the best shooting season of his career, but in the first round loss to the Rockets he hit just 28.
