The Lakers don't look like a contender. Neither did the '24 Mavs
Los Angeles has bet big on Luka Magic. That bet has generally worked out in the past.
Los Angeles has bet big on Luka Magic. That bet has generally worked out in the past.
Good morning. It's Free Newsletter Wednesday, and I think I'm going to say something nice about ... the Lakers. Ugh. Let's basketball.
The Lakers' Walker Kessler deal is textbook overpayment. Giving up real assets for the opportunity to give a largely untested player lots and lots of money is generally frowned upon, and that's becoming more rigid a position the more rigid the NBA's salary cap structure becomes. The Lakers gave up two unprotected firsts – the last in their cupboard – and two swap options to sign and trade for Kessler, who will earn 18% of the cap for the next four years. Kessler has played in 61% of Utah's games over four years and exactly zero high-leverage games. It took him until his third season (age 23) to earn Will Hardy's trust as a full-time starter. He's a brilliant offensive rebounder and shotblocker, has generally checked the box in plus-minus based metrics (albeit for a bizarre team rarely trying to win – there's lots of noise there) and knows well enough to not do what he's not capable of doing (handling the ball, shooting outside of 10 feet [though there were signs of stretchiness in his aborted fourth season]).
Kessler also happened to be almost hand-picked by Luka Doncic as the exact type of center he wanted to play with. That counts for a lot, because we've seen what Luka can do with the type of center he likes. That applies to Austin Reaves, who signed on for lots of money to continue his career with the Lakers. Just those three players alone – Luka, Reaves and Kessler – spark memories of the last shockingly good Luka team, the 2023-24 Mavericks, who stunned almost everyone to make the NBA Finals.
Those Mavericks had Daniel Gafford and Dereck Lively II – rim-running, non-stretch, defense-first centers, much like Kessler – and Kyrie Irving – much better handles and NBA pedigree than Reaves but similarly deadly on the perimeter and attacking the rim. The supporting cast was quite a hodge podge. Tim Hardaway Jr. was No. 2 on the team (behind Luka) in minutes played as a sixth man. Derrick Jones Jr. was a pretty consistent starter on the wing, with P.J. Washington coming over midseason (around the same time as Gafford) to take a big role. Josh Green was heavily in the mix. Dante Exum was, uh, crucial? Jaden Hardy had some moments.
This is all to say that the 2023-24 Dallas Mavericks were not world-beaters on paper beyond Luka and, really, Kyrie, who was in a very odd place in his career to that point. But they had a style built around those two, and more specifically Luka, and the team was good enough to pull 50 wins and the No. 5 seed in the West. And they rode that modest regular season success into a hellfire playoff run that landed them into the NBA Finals.
Related to that fact is the existence of a 77-minute highlight package of Luka from the 2024 playoffs on the NBA's official YouTube channel.
The two seasons since that run have been really weird for Doncic. Hell, the NBA Finals at the conclusion of that run were really weird. His performance for Slovenia in international competition has been weird. The fact that he got traded a few months after this run is really, really weird. But the capacity to be the best player in the world is right there. It's evident. We've seen it. And we've seen what sort of pieces around him amplify his talent.
Kessler resembles the center Luka best thrived with in Dallas. Reaves is proximate to the impact of late-stage Kyrie. All the wings and spare defenders required to help a Luka-Reaves backcourt survive as a Luka-Kyrie backcourt did remain question marks; Collin Sexton, Sandro Mamukelashvili, Quentin Grimes, Jake LaRavia, Jarred Vanderbilt (assuming he can get off the bench) and possible current target Jonathan Kuminga appear to be the Lakers' choices for the DJJ, Washington, Hardaway, Exum roles. This might be where the comparison falls off – the pressure on Kessler to defend is going to be mighty unless rookie Cameron Carr can start fast or Mamu or LaRavia can become stoppers or Vanderbilt can find some (any) range.
This is a highly speculative and risky build for Rob Pelinka and the Lakers – that is absolutely true, and a valid criticism of the process. Los Angeles, especially with the Kessler deal, has totally boxed themselves into this version. Kessler is a bad start or another shoulder injury from becoming an albatross contract, and the Lakers simply don't have any sweeteners left to dislodge it.
We're now eight years into Luka's NBA career, and it's becoming clear that any team built around Doncic is going to be speculative based on his conditioning and health. That's the one part of Nico Harrison's twisted logic that actually makes sense – Doncic is brilliant but chaotic as a foundation stone, and if you're building your team's whole identity around a single player, you'd like that player to be more stable, like Shai or Jokic or Curry or Wembanyama or Brunson or Edwards or Tatum or Haliburton or, for so many years, LeBron. Luka is more of the Kevin Durant type: unquestionably brilliant, not terribly stable as a centerpiece for various reasons.
Luka fell into the Lakers' laps in February 2025. But he didn't lose his baggage at the airport. It came with him, and it requires certain compromises in team-building. Pelinka, Mark Walter and the Lakers broadly will take those compromises 100 times out of 100 if it means having Luka as the team's foundation. But we're starting to see the cost as the team – a perfect team for him – gets built around him. It's not easy, and it's certainly not without a whole lot of risk.
And 1
Playoff series wins for each of the super friends since leaving the Brooklyn Nets:
Kevin Durant: 1
Kyrie Irving: 3
James Harden: 4
Harden did have an extra year, for what it's worth. No one pulls a ripcord like James Harden.
USA Basketball Is Botching FIBA Qualifying And Getting Away With It
You may have seen clips of some of the best players in the world performing for their national teams over the past week or so. Here's Nikola Jokic dropping a triple-double on regional rival Bosnia and Herzegovina for his native Serbia.
Shai Gilgeous-Alexander cut off his rows and tortured teams like Jamaica for the Canadian team.
This batch of qualification games for the 2027 FIBA World Cup is leading into final qualifying round, which will be held at the end of August, late November and late February. Notably, two of those periods interfere with the normal NBA and domestic league seasons. So the best time for nations with high-level talent to ensure they win some qualification games and make the World Cup pool is, uh, now.
While most high-end national teams brought their talent for this window, USA Basketball ... did not. Here's the box score from Team USA's last game against Mexico.
The only current NBA player on the roster is Jay Huff. (Yes, his given name is James. He does not have a twin brother. I checked.) In related news, Team USA won its two qualification games in this window by a combined two points.
Those wins, however narrow, mean USA Basketball will move on in favorable position into the next round. However, the wins also mean that USA Basketball will continue to run out groups of European, Australian and G League talent for FIBA and Olympic qualification and not build a program for the senior men's national team, which is going to be sorely needed for the team to maintain its dominance as the top talent increasingly comes from the international ranks. These summer windows should be dedicated to young American players who have grown out of Summer League but aren't so old they need to carefully manage their summer workload. Get Stephon Castle, Keyonte George, Jalen Johnson, Scoot Henderson, Donovan Clingan and the like out here. You might need one of them for the actual 2027 World Cup or 2028 Olympic team.
It's going to be really embarrassing if Team USA has to backdoor into one of the global tournaments, or even worse, keeps losing the World Cup.
Links and Whatnot
Paul Flannery with an exegesis of the Jaylen Brown trade. Plus: here's Flanns on the Celtics' other moves.
Kelly Dwyer on the harder cap and how players should fight back against it.
Kyle Lowry made an Aspiration reference when talking about Kawhi Leonard at his retirement event. Of course he did!
Quinten Post and the Grizzlies conspired to screw over the Warriors' bid to land LeBron via a reasonably healthy offer sheet. The Warriors decided to screw over the Grizzlies in return by declining to match and sticking Memphis with Post at three years, $30 million.
Some previously announced trades have been Voltron'd into a bigger thing that now includes Detroit losing Marcus Sasser and Caris LeVert while bringing back Taurean Prince and Gary Harris and re-adds Khris Middleton to the Wizards.
The Lakers signed Kevon Looney to a small deal while trying to sign Jonathan Kuminga. Every summer is now a Jonathan Kuminga telenovela!
Alright, that's all for this week's Free Wednesday Newsletter. If you like it and want more newsletters on Thursday, Friday, Monday and Tuesday, become a paid subscriber.
Be excellent to each other.
