Pelinka and Redick should be safe under Dodgers regime … for now

Memo to Mark Walter:

Check your swing.

Now that you are the majority owner of the Lakers, everyone expects you to hit their two most eminent leaders in the hope of transforming the basketball team into your baseball team, but you should rather act in terms of your dodgers.

Take land.

Keep Rob Pelinka and JJ Redick in their work… for now.

Okay, that could be a difficult call, and there could certainly be the temptation to be able to immediately the two employees of the Lakers who most embody the incestuous decisions that led to the organization of the formerly brilliant championship in dull mediocrity.

Pelinka, president of basketball operations and managing director, was hired eight years ago because he was the agent and confidant of Kobe Bryant.

Redick, the head coach, was hired last summer because he was LeBron James’ podcast.

None of the two men has reached their current positions with strong qualifications. The two men were beneficiaries of a post-jerry culture in which the daughter Jeanie will surround herself with friends and family.

It is a culture that led to disproportionate decision -making roles for Linda and Kurt Rambis. It is a culture diametrically opposed to the meritocracy that made the other glamorous team of this large city.

Now that the Dodgers have essentially swallowed the whole Lakers, it could be a lost conclusion that Pelinka and Redick are among the first to disappear.

Memo to Mark Walter:

Mark Walter, the owner of the Dodgers control, has recently become a majority involvement of the Lakers.

(Emma McIntyre / Getty Images)

Wait for the third round.

Pelinka and Redick both got a chance to show their strengths in a new system in which there will certainly be increased screening, advanced analyzes and new professionalism for an infrastructure that had been difficult to succeed for an official.

Ned Colletti was the director general of the Dodgers when the Walter group bought the team in spring 2012. He lasted two more seasons, Guggenheim partners paying money into the team and giving him all the chance to succeed before dismissing him.

Pelinka deserves at least half this chance.

Don Mattingly was the manager when Walter bought the team. He lasted four more seasons, finally separating after the 2015 season.

Redick deserves at least part of this leash.

Although the two men were considered to be surpassed both in this space and by initiates of the NBA through the landscape, everyone did well enough not to be summarily beheaded as soon as Walter crosses the door.

Start with Pelinka. You know he has an NBA championship on his CV, right? While Alex Caruso rejected the 2020 title as a fake last week after winning another ring with Oklahoma City, this first counts still, and Pelinka still deserves credit for having supervised it.

Yes, Pelinka is the villain who has spoiled everything by letting Caruso walk while eliminating the title team to acquire Russell Westbrook. But it may also be the only manager in the history of the NBA to acquire three players like LeBron James, Luka Doncic and Anthony Davis.

He had a lot of help there – Magic Johnson recruited James, and James recruited Davis, and Nico Harrison gave him so – but he was still the final cog to get there.

Pelinka also designed the magnificent signature of a free free agent who was Austin Reaves, which led the Lakers to finish this season as the third seeded to the west.

You did not fire a decision maker the same year that his rebuilt team ended third in the most competitive basketball district. You did not dismiss a decision maker two years after his team reached the Western Conference final. And you certainly did not fire a decision maker until you know what’s going on with his best employee.

It seems clear that James will admire his $ 52.6 million contract this week and stay with the team – and his son Bonny – for at least one more season. If this is the case, then Pelinka should have the possibility of adding the rim protector that he sought to maximize Doncic and give James one more opportunity on a ring.

However, if James unexpectedly refuses money to seek better title opportunities elsewhere – it is not a bad decision for Lakers, honestly – the chaos of the alignment that follows will not be the right time to make a change at the top.

Anyway, the situation is fluid enough for Pelinka to be allowed to see it.

The same goes for Redick, who did an admirable job during his first regular season before melting in the playoffs.

Admittedly, some would consider its management of the first series match against the Minnesota Timberwolves as an offense, especially in match 4 when he used the same five players for a second half. He did not make favors when he later reacted to the criticism of this decision by bristling with the question of a journalist before moving away from a pre-match press conference.

During the most important moments of the season, Redick was above his head. But as he admitted, he will learn, he will grow, he will be better and he did quite well during the regular season to believe him.

Redick resulted in a team before Doncic arrived and Davis’ departure. He then trained another team. He skillfully managed these two teams while intelligently disarming the potentially divisor who was Bonny. Redick also allowed Reaves to become a third legitimate threat before Reaves joined his coach in an act of disappearance in the playoffs.

All this brings this surprisingly sweet piece to this week to come, the start of the summer madness of the NBA, and the pressure is lit.

Like it or not, Pelinka and Redick are a pair now, a tandem joined by the appearance of a new owner with new expectations.

Pelinka needs to find a great man who can help carry them deeply in the playoffs. No matter who Pelinka acquires, Redick must take care of Doncic and make it work.

They will not have a lot of chance under a new Dodger regime which requires sustained success, but they deserve at least one chance of taking advantage of the massive changes that this new property group will surely create in the return of the largest basketball franchise to new glories.

Memo to Mark Walter:

Keep the names of Pelinka and Redick in the map of the range.

In pencil.