Grade the Lakers' Offseason. What's a Fair Evaluation for Rob Pelinka and the Roster?

With most of the dust settled in the NBA offseason, it's not a bad time to start doing some leaguewide evaluations of how things have gone. 

That means grades! The Athletic put out a batch, and Lakers beat writer wrote this about the purple and gold: 

"Grade: B-

The challenge in grading the Lakers’ offseason is whether to hold them to the relative scale of what they were trying to accomplish or whether to grade them against the rest of the league — in particular, their rivals in the West. If it’s regarding what they were trying to accomplish, it’s hard to think of a way they could’ve done better than Deandre Ayton, Jake LaRavia and Marcus Smart without sacrificing draft picks or significant assets. If it’s against the rest of the West, you can’t say on paper that they kept up with the Houston Rockets, Denver Nuggets or maybe even the LA Clippers. But an offseason isn’t just about which players come in and which ones are lost; there’s other stuff, too. Luka Dončić’s extension (and role in signing Ayton and Smart) bodes well for a long-term relationship between the organization and the star. The ownership sale to Mark Walter at a $10 billion evaluation should eventually give the team every financial tool and then some. The awkwardness with LeBron James is less than ideal, but on the whole, the Lakers got better this summer in more than one way."

So is this fair? Accurate? Is the split-emphasis on both the rest of the conference and moves in a vacuum the right way to look at it? Does it sell the Lakers a little bit short? 

And then meanwhile, even if you think the Lakers have fallen a tick or two behind the best teams in the conference (which is a fair evaluation) it's important to remember that the Lakers had a lot more room to move down than move up. Treading water would have been a reasonable outcome. Getting better? And getting Luka under contract in the best way possible? That's pretty good stuff.

From there, we explain why the Luka Era officially began this offseason, even if his arrival dates back to last February. 

 

HOSTS: Andy and Brian Kamenetzky

SEGMENT 1: The Lakers get a B- from The Athletic. Fair? 

 

SEGMENT 2: When did the Luka Era actually start? 

 

SEGMENT 3: Why B- might be too low? 

 

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