EL SEGUNDO — It’s common for teams hoping to contend for an NBA title to make significant changes – roster, coaching, front office or a combination of the three – if they feel they underachieved the previous season.
The Lakers’ front office continues to be led by Rob Pelinka, who is entering his eighth full season as the general manager and fifth as vice president of basketball operations.
The Lakers’ roster entering the 2024-25 season? Very similar to the one they ended 2023-24 with. Thirteen players from last year’s team signed to standard NBA deals returned, with rookies Dalton Knecht and Bronny James being the additions.
The biggest changes: JJ Redick replacing Darvin Ham as the team’s head coach and an entirely new coaching staff.
Will that change be enough to get the Lakers over the hump and closer to their goal of winning an 18th NBA championship?
“We’ll see,” All-Star big man Anthony Davis said. “We look good on both ends of the floor. But we’ll see if it translates to the regular season. Can’t say that that change is going to get us over the hump. We don’t know.
“But what we do know is that we’re going to come every day, put our hard hats on and create a working environment where we prepare each and every night to put ourselves in the best position to win basketball games.”
Redick inherits a team that has shown promise in recent years.
Seven players from the team that reached the 2023 Western Conference finals remain: Davis, LeBron James, Austin Reaves, D’Angelo Russell, Rui Hachimura, Jarred Vanderbilt and Max Christie.
The Lakers won 30 of their final 46 games last season – including 23 of the final 33 and 11 of their last 14 – behind one of the league’s most efficient offenses.
“JJ and I talk a lot about the roster and both of us in our partnership have a really strong belief in the 15 players on this team,” Pelinka said. “For any team to do well, you have to have good health and good fortune and those things are variables you can’t control. The inverse of change or overhaul is continuity. Continuity can be highly successful in sports.
“This is a core group that did make it to the Western Conference finals. We didn’t have Gabe Vincent or [Vanderbilt] last year for whole seasons. If you add two players like that, there’s a delta there. There’s going to be internal growth. We’re going to see increased on-ball stuff from Austin Reaves. There’s going to be growth from him and Rui. All the guys across the roster, there’s going to be internal improvement. So we have a high level of confidence in this group and we’re going to lean into the things we can control and lean into the continuity of this team.”
But the postseason results, being knocked out of the playoffs in the first round by the Denver Nuggets, left a lot to be desired.
And the process to their 47-35 record in 2023-24 felt underwhelming, with the Lakers going through phases of inconsistent play and disjointedness despite their continuity.
“We’ve been building our chemistry – this is basically like a third season,” Hachimura said. “We already have some type of chemistry here. But I think we need with the coach, JJ and the other coaches, we’re gonna get to the next level. We had a pretty good preseason. The results [weren’t] good, but we got something that we wanted.”
In Redick and his staff, the Lakers are looking for on-court clarity and structure to be more established.
The early returns have been promising.
The Lakers looked more organized on both ends of the court during the preseason as they continued to establish their identity and philosophies.
“It’s not always just JJ, it’s the whole coaching staff,” said James, the league’s all-time leading scorer who’s entering his 22nd NBA season. “They have assembled a coaching staff that’s holding everyone accountable. But more importantly, they are just making sure that we’re taking in all the details, taking in all the information at a pace that’s good for all of us.
“They’re making sure that they got all of us and what we want to do offensively and defensively and how we want to play with situational basketball, what they would command out of us and it’s up to us to go out and perform that. And when we don’t perform that, they hold us accountable. And they want us to play a certain way and that’s how we need to play. We want to play the game the right way. Unselfishly. And if we do that, we’re going to always put ourselves in a position to be successful.”
