The Los Angeles Lakers just suffered through the worst season in franchise history. On the bright side for the players and fans, the year is over, and the Lakers will join the other 13 non-playoff teams in waiting for the draft lottery.
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Now that the team is officially on to the offseason, they can also start planning out their strategy for reshaping the roster. The team has been open about the free agents that it wants to pursue, and although it cannot start wooing those players yet, they can start figuring out how to open up salary cap room. But before general manager Mitch Kupchak gets to any of that important business, he wanted to make it known that he disapproves of the rebuilding strategy of another struggling team.
Mitch on 76ers rebuilding plan: "I still don't understand what they're doing."
— Mark Medina (@MarkG_Medina) April 16, 2015
The unintentional comedy present in that statement is off the charts, as many around the league have had the same thoughts about L.A. for a couple of years now. The team re-signed aging star Kobe Bryant to a monster deal that he would have had no chance of living up to even if he had stayed healthy, and now he will clog their cap enough to prevent the team from adding two megastars in free agency this summer.
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The Lakers also started winning some games down the stretch, which puts them at serious risk of losing their first round pick. The pick is top-five protected, meaning the Lakers lose it unless it is one of the first five picks in the draft.
Los Angeles looked like a lock to finish with one of the two worst records for most of the year, but some better play in the past couple of months put them in the range that - with a couple of unlucky ping pong ball bounces at the lottery - the team could see its top pick head to another franchise.
As many others will surely point out, Kupchak has enough problems with his own roster that he shouldn't feel qualified to discuss anyone else's plan for rebuilding.
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