Don’t Forget LeBron James’ Behind-the-Scenes Role in Lakers Blame Game

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On back-to-back nights Tuesday and Wednesday, LeBron James’ Los Angeles Lakers lost to teams at opposite ends of the competitive spectrum: the defending champion Milwaukee Bucks and a Portland Trail Blazers team fresh off a complete roster tear-down with eyes on the lottery.

Russell Westbrook was benched at the end of the loss to the Bucks, but the Lakers didn’t have him to blame for the debacle in Portland, where the rest of their starters, including James and Anthony Davis, were outplayed and outworked by little-known fringe players such as CJ Elleby, Keljin Blevins and Greg Brown III.

In a season full of rock bottoms, that 24-hour stretch was another one. But it was in many ways the logical endpoint of the past year—and exactly what James signed up for.

The following day, at Thursday’s trade deadline, Westbrook wasn’t traded, and neither were any other Lakers. This wasn’t entirely surprising. Nobody thought there would be an appetite among other teams to take on Westbrook’s gigantic contract, not without general manager Rob Pelinka attaching the only first-round pick the Lakers even have left to trade.

Westbrook has become a popular target for blame among Lakers fans, but trading him for, say, John Wall likely wouldn’t have solved much. Neither, at this point, will firing head coach Frank Vogel, the other figure who’s taken the majority of public heat for the team’s 26-30 record.

If there’s anyone to blame for where the Lakers are right now, it’s not Westbrook or Vogel. It’s not Pelinka, either, who is nominally the general manager but can only do so much outside of the influence one of the best players in the sport’s history wields.

This is the roster James wanted. He was heavily involved in recruiting Westbrook and pushing Pelinka to deal two important role players from the 2020 bubble title team, Kentavious Caldwell-Pope and Kyle Kuzma, along with capable backup center Montrezl Harrell, to Washington for the polarizing guard. The rest of the roster has mainly been filled out by players who are either James’ close friends (Carmelo Anthony) or clients of his agent, Rich Paul of Klutch Sports (Talen Horton-Tucker, Kendrick Nunn).

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If there’s a miscue that can be placed at the feet of Pelinka and owner Jeanie Buss, it’s the decision to let one of their most vital rotation players, defensive guard Alex Caruso, leave for Chicago in free agency over luxury-tax concerns after taking on Westbrook’s enormous contract.

That’s the kind of cost-cutting move the third-most valuable franchise in the NBA has no excuse to make with a 37-year-old all-time great in the waning years of his championship window, especially when James is still among the best players in the NBA despite his advanced age.

This is the tradeoff James made in 2018. It’s tough to believe he chose to sign with the Lakers because he was just so blown away by the vision Pelinka and Buss had for the roster. He picked them because he thought it would be cool to wear purple and gold, and because of the off-court opportunities that came with being a Laker.

“If I’m going to leave Cleveland again, it needs to be like what I dreamt of as a kid,” James reportedly told a confidant leading up to this decision in 2018.

Paul would later hint in a New Yorker profile last spring that Davis, another Klutch client, forcing his way out of New Orleans was his and James’ idea.

Just as he did when he left Miami to return to Cleveland in 2014, James and Paul remade the roster to his liking, engineering the trade of promising prospects Lonzo Ball, Brandon Ingram and Josh Hart along with a half-decade’s worth of future draft picks to the Pelicans for Davis. That move can never be called a failure because it succeeded in winning James his fourth championship in 2020. But it also severely limited what they were able to do going forward.

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During his second stint in Cleveland, which resulted in four straight Finals appearances and the most important and impactful of his four rings, James was always able to successfully pressure his front offices to radically remake his teams on the fly. From brokering the Andrew Wiggins-for-Kevin Love deal upon his arrival in 2014 to the JR Smith and Timofey Mozgov deals midway through his first season there to the 10-player shakeup at the trade deadline of his final year there in 2018, James was always able to get the Cavs to get him the help he needed.

He’s had no such luck in Los Angeles since the 2020 championship, and it’s largely his own doing. If he hadn’t pushed so hard for the Westbrook trade, this year’s Lakers roster would be both deeper and have more players to trade that other teams would actually want. If the Lakers hadn’t balked at including Horton-Tucker (another Klutch client) in a trade for Kyle Lowry from Toronto at last year’s deadline, they wouldn’t be in a position now where Horton-Tucker was their only plausible trade piece and one that didn’t get much interest as he’s having a disappointing third season.

This is just what the Lakers are now. They aren’t in the same zip code as the Western Conference contenders in Phoenix, Golden State and Memphis this year, and they don’t have many avenues to get better in future seasons. They’ll probably fire Vogel in the summer, but a coaching change won’t improve a roster with no cap room and nothing to trade. Firing Pelinka won’t fix those problems, either.

James got the team he wanted and it worked for a while—until it didn’t. Now, the Lakers find themselves in the aftermath of all of that and there doesn’t appear to be a way out.