After winning free agency, the Lakers should be championship favorites

The Los Angeles Lakers were good last season; really good. If that wasn’t obvious when they finished the regular season with the best record in the Western Conference, it should have been after they won all but one of their playoff series in five games and reached an NBA championship.

If the Lakers decided to run again with the same roster next season, they would surely have been among the favorites to win the title as they were last season, if not the absolute favorites. However, complacency was not an option for Rob Pelinka, and he made that clear as he entered the offseason.

However, that didn’t mean making moves just for the sake of making moves. After all, this is a team that prided itself on its chemistry last season. But as much as the Lakers valued the character of the players they had in their locker room last season, and the speed with which each player bought into playing team basketball, they weren’t going to pass up the opportunity to improve, especially when The opportunities are as golden as they have been.

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The first big domino that fell for the Lakers was the trade for Dennis Schröder. Schröder, the runner-up for last season’s Sixth Man of the Year award, epitomized what it means to be a spark plug from the bench in his second season with the Oklahoma City Thunder, averaging 18.9 points per game on 46.9% shooting from the field. , including 38.5% from the 3-point range, the last of which was a personal record for him.

Upon arrival, Schröder will give the Lakers something they didn’t consistently have last season, and he’s a guard who can create his own shot while engaging others. Rajon Rondo did that in the playoffs, but not as much in the regular season.

But what the Lakers gained on the offensive side by trading Schröder, they lost on the defensive side by trading Danny Green, or at least that seemed to be the case initially. The same could have been said of the signing of Montrezl Harrell’s team, who won the sixth man of the year last season, but not for his contributions on the defensive side.

While both may turn out to be true next season, the Lakers have adhered to Newton’s Third Law of Motion in free agency: For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.

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In an effort to replace Green’s two-way production on the wing, the Lakers signed Wesley Matthews to a one-year contract for the biennial exception. Matthews is not the upgrade to Green than Schröder is to Rondo, but the combination of Schröder and Matthews has the potential to be better than the sum of what Green and Rondo provided to the Lakers last season. It’s a balancing act, and it’s one Pelinka has made with every move she’s made this offseason.

Like Schröder, Harrell made his money on offense last season, averaging a career-high 18.6 points per game on 58% shooting from the field. That’s not to say he didn’t add any value on the defensive end (he averaged 7.1 rebounds and 1.1 blocks per game in the regular season), but that wasn’t his main focus with the Clippers, nor is it expected to be his point. of emphasis with the Lakers.

The opposite was true of Dwight Howard last season, who was a stabilizing presence on the defensive end, particularly in the post, where he was able to keep even the strongest and most skilled big men honest. Harrell might be a better player than Howard at this stage in his career, but at 6-foot-7, he won’t get the defensive assignment from Joel Embiid or Nikola Jokic.

Knowing that, the Lakers aggressively pursued a defensive-minded center in free agency, landing one of the best in the league in Marc Gasol. Gasol may not be as mobile as he was seven years ago, when he won the Defensive Player of the Year award, but he remains a fundamentally strong and skilled defensive player. That’s why he finished the season with the seventh-highest defensive plus-minus real (3.42) in the NBA, and why the Toronto Raptors’ defensive rating was 7.7 points better with him on the court.

Gasol won’t get on his springboard to block shots like McGee or Howard did last season, but he will make the Lakers better on the defensive end and give them a different dynamic on the offensive end, where he excels as a post-passer. and has the ability to be a pick-and-pop threat. Meanwhile, Harrell will give the Lakers a skilled and versatile athlete with whom LeBron James can make plays on the pick-and-roll.

With all due respect to Howard and McGee, the Lakers greatly improved at center this offseason, and they did so while working under the cap. That is something incredible.

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Where the Lakers go from here will depend on who is available when the market cools, but even if they don’t find another one to make a difference in the later stages of free agency, they will enter the season with one of the deepest. rosters in the NBA, if not the deepest. The same didn’t happen last season, and they still won everything.

That’s not a slight to the role players on last year’s team; there were only some players who were more expendable than others, and those who weren’t, like Kentavious Caldwell-Pope and Markieff Morris, came back. In all, six players from the Lakers’ championship-winning roster will officially return for another season. That doesn’t include Anthony Davis, who is expected to eventually sign a maximum contract.

While some teams took a step back this offseason, the Lakers took two steps forward, at least on paper. Right now, they should be considered the big favorites to win it all, and they still have several vacant spots on the roster. Things couldn’t have gone much better for them.

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