A Hollywood Ending, page 24
“Requiring a four-year degree accomplishes only one thing—systematically excluding those who come from a world where college is unrealistic,” Paul wrote in an op-ed for The Athletic. Six hours after his piece was published, the NCAA announced that it had amended the rule to remove the degree requirement.
Going to UTA without Mark Termini, whose contract with Klutch had expired, also changed things.[*1] In Klutch’s early years, Termini’s relentlessness perfectly complemented Paul’s congenial attitude. “Termini could be the fucking assassin, and Rich never had to damage his relationship with the teams,” one former general manager said. Termini fought for every provision and every dollar, insisted on contracts being front-loaded, and on multiple occasions used the Eric Bledsoe playbook to get Klutch clients paid; Cavaliers role players Tristan Thompson and J. R. Smith had both received significant raises after sitting out the beginning of training camps.
But by this point Paul had succeeded in everything he’d set out to do. He’d both built a narrative about himself—Termini’s name was almost never mentioned in the press—and put together a championship team in LA for two of his top clients. Now he was ready for the next phase of his professional life. “I’m an entrepreneur,” he’d often tell people, “not just an agent,” and over the next few years he’d make a point of flexing those muscles. He’d become the face of a lifestyle brand (New Balance’s Klutch Athletics) and write a New York Times bestselling memoir. He’d also get engaged to the pop star Adele.
The goals had changed, and Klutch’s days of holding feet to the fire on every contract negotiation were over. Caldwell-Pope, for example, received a bump in salary when he re-signed during the 2020 offseason, but the third year of his deal was only partially guaranteed. His contract didn’t contain any form of a player option or trade kicker either, player-friendly clauses that Klutch had often demanded in the past. And if Paul was more interested in a partnership, the Lakers, for the time being, were more than happy to play along. After all, if there was one thing Jeanie had learned from her father, it was the importance of catering to stars. Not that someone like Pelinka, whose entire career was built on his ability to make clients feel special and secure, needed much prodding. During an interview with the Los Angeles Times after winning the 2020 title, Jeanie even went out of her way to compliment Klutch COO Fara Leff: “She’s bright, and she brings an energy and ideas and creativity.”
The strategy appeared to pay off. While speaking with The New Yorker for a May 2021 profile, Paul referred to the Lakers as “us.”
“This sounded like a strangely partisan observation for an agent with clients across the NBA,” the writer, Isaac Chotiner, wrote. He said he raised this point to Paul.
“C’mon,” Paul replied. “I’ve got six guys on the team.”[*2]
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• • •
Opening night of the 2020–21 season had arrived, and the atmosphere might have been stranger than the bubble’s. The stands in Staples Center were empty, the coaches wore masks on the sidelines, and Adam Silver, on hand to present players with their 2020 title rings, couldn’t go near any of the individuals he was congratulating.
“These are obviously highly unusual times,” Silver said during the ceremony. He then turned things over to Jeanie.
“I’m gonna take a second to speak directly to Lakers fans,” she said. “We miss you so much, the team misses you, but someday soon we’ll be together, and when we are together we have something special to celebrate.”
The Lakers fell to the Clippers that night, but a week later ripped off four straight wins. Then came a five-game winning streak. Then a seven-game one. On the morning of February 14, they woke up in Denver with a 21–6 record, second best in the NBA. Everything seemed to be clicking. The returning players showed no rust; the new ones fit in seamlessly. The defense was ranked No. 1. LeBron was coasting a bit but still controlling things. Davis’s jumper was off, but he was still dominant on both ends of the floor. Schröder was producing offense in a way no Lakers point guard had the season before. Harrell was providing offense off the bench. Caldwell-Pope and Caruso were both shooting lights out while locking down opposing wings.
“Everything was going smoothly,” Harrell said.
The Lakers faced the Nuggets that night. With just over two minutes remaining in the first half, Davis attacked Nikola Jokić from the left wing. Jokić bumped him. Davis stumbled. A foul was called, but Davis grimaced while strolling to the free throw line. After he buried both shots, the Lakers chose to take an intentional foul and subbed Davis out. He hobbled to the locker room. He’d aggravated a minor Achilles injury that he’d suffered the previous week. After the game Davis underwent an MRI. The good news was that there was no rupture. The bad news was that he would be out indefinitely.
The Lakers held on the next night for a win in Minnesota but, with Davis out, dropped six out of their next eight. A month later, Hawks forward Solomon Hill crashed into LeBron’s right ankle while diving for a loose ball. LeBron left the game soon after—knocking over a chair on his way to the locker room—and wound up missing more than a month. With their two best players out of the lineup, some cracks that had been forming beneath the surface began revealing themselves. Pelinka’s offseason moves had boosted the team’s talent, but all that wheeling and dealing had come at a cost.
“Everybody with the title team just bought into their roles,” said Markieff Morris, whom the Lakers brought back on a one-year deal. “Nobody took anything personally. We were all there to win. It was different the next year. Some guys were in contract years; people just weren’t as happy.”
Schröder, despite putting up strong numbers, irritated teammates with his shoot-first approach. He was also just a few months away from free agency and asking for more money than the Lakers were offering. The two sides were so far apart that the team had included him in proposals leading up to the March 25 trade deadline.
Schröder wasn’t the only new addition struggling to find his footing. Gasol shot well from deep, but he turned thirty-six in January and couldn’t handle big minutes. Harrell was fine as a backup but, as an undersized big man who couldn’t protect the rim or keep up with wings on the perimeter, was too poor a defender to be much more.
Pelinka tried addressing his problems at center in late March by signing Andre Drummond, an affable former client of his who was one of the best rebounders in the league. But to secure him, the Lakers had to promise Drummond that he’d be the starting center, which angered Gasol. “It’s a hard pill to swallow,” Gasol told reporters a few games after the signing. It was a stark contrast to the previous season and how McGee, Howard, and others had handled the way their roles were altered and swapped throughout the playoffs. The move poisoned the locker room. Drummond, who was, somehow, even slower than Gasol on defense, failed to make a difference on the court, either. After arriving in LA he averaged just 11.9 points per game, nearly six fewer than his output with the Cavaliers earlier that season.
“A lot of the new guys didn’t fit how we wanted to play,” assistant coach Lionel Hollins said.
Making matters even worse was that the Lakers had to deal with Schröder, Caruso, and Gasol all missing extended periods due to the NBA’s “health and safety” protocols (the fancy, HIPAA-compliant term used by the league to protect the privacy of players who had tested positive for or been exposed to Covid). And they’d wiped out a part of their home-court advantage by barring fans from Staples Center for nearly the entire season due to the pandemic. The Lakers weren’t the only team dealing with Covid-related absences, playing in empty arenas, or worn down by the condensed offseason, but they were the only one trying to do so while defending a title.
Davis didn’t return to the court until April 22. LeBron returned April 30 for two games but, after feeling soreness, sat out the next six. The Lakers went 12–15 in the games without him and plummeted into seventh in the Western Conference standings. Their punishment was a matchup with Stephen Curry and the Warriors in the play-in tournament, a new format introduced by the NBA that season. The winner would advance into the playoffs and face the second-seeded Phoenix Suns, with the loser relegated to one final win-or-go-home contest.
The game was tight throughout. Then, with one minute left and the shot clock running out, LeBron buried a jumper from deep behind the three-point line, giving the Lakers a 103–100 lead and win. They fell to the Suns in the opening game of the first round but bounced back by taking Games 2 and 3. It was evident that LeBron’s ankle was hampering him—he attempted just four foul shots in those two games—but Davis stepped up, scoring 34 points in each win. Somehow, despite all the new faces and all the growing pains and all the injuries, the Lakers were now just two wins away from advancing in the playoffs.
Game 4 was tight early. Then, with under a minute left in the first half, Davis crumpled to the ground after cutting to the hoop. This time it was his groin. He left the court and did not return. The Lakers fell 100–92. Davis remained sidelined for Game 5. The Lakers lost again. Davis tried playing in Game 6 but, after trying to block a shot early in the first quarter, came up hobbling and asked out. The Lakers fell behind by 29 before losing 113–100, ending their season.
“The one thing that bothers me more than anything is we never really got an opportunity to see our full team at full strength,” LeBron told reporters after the loss. Sitting there in his press conference, he showed no signs of anger, no flashes of frustration. He talked about his ankle injury. He commended the Suns. He made a joke about the new Space Jam movie, which was set to premiere the following month. He looked loose and relaxed, and while he wasn’t happy to go home, he did seem relieved.
“From the moment we entered the bubble to now, today, it’s been draining,” he said. “Mentally, physically, spiritually, emotionally draining.”
The bubble had affected everyone who participated, but the teams that advanced furthest had seemed to be impacted most. Three of the previous season’s conference finalists—the Lakers, Celtics, and Heat—had failed to advance out of the playoffs’ first round. The Lakers had fallen short in their bid to repeat, but they’d also been dealt as bad a hand as any defending champion in league history.
“Either because of injury or Covid or something going on with our ball club this year, we could never fully get into a rhythm and never really see the full potential of what we could be capable of,” LeBron said. LeBron and Davis were locked up on long-term deals. So were some of the team’s top role players. The core of the team that had jumped out to a 21–6 start remained. All LeBron and Pelinka had to do were remain patient and tweak things around the edges. A few small moves here, and they figured they’d be back in title contention.
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LeBron might have sounded at ease. But behind the scenes, he was far from it.
Within a month, he made clear that he was not actually interested in seeing what the previous season’s roster could do under more normal circumstances. What he wanted was another star, and he wasn’t going to wait for Pelinka to figure out a way to get one.
The calls and texts started going out around July, about a month before the start of free agency. LeBron, Davis, and Dudley—who’d become the duo’s consigliere—huddled in LeBron’s house and pored over the league’s rosters. They were looking for insurance. LeBron was thirty-six years old. Davis had a history of injuries and had missed 36 games the previous season. They needed a better version of Schröder, someone who could ease the burden on them both and carry the load if one of them went down.
The trio landed on a few names. DeMar DeRozan, a four-time All-Star wing who, despite being thirty-one years old, was coming off one of the best seasons of his career and was entering free agency. Damian Lillard, one of the league’s top point guards, who was flashing signs of frustration with how the Blazers’ front office was building the team. Bradley Beal, who’d finished the previous season second in scoring and was stuck on a Wizards team seemingly going nowhere.
Beal and Lillard became the primary targets. Each of them met with LeBron at his house. “It was basically engaging my interest in LA, trying to see how the system could fit together and how we could all potentially fit together,” Beal said. He was intrigued. So was Lillard. But the Lakers didn’t have enough assets to pry either away from their respective teams.
Next, LeBron turned his attention to DeRozan.
“I wanna see you win one,” he texted DeRozan during the 2021 finals.
“Let’s figure out a way to make it happen,” DeRozan replied.
A few weeks later, the two were having lunch on the patio in LeBron’s backyard, discussing strategy and how a partnership could work. Using a napkin, they drew up plays and schemes. They reviewed the roster and discussed what sort of players would fit best alongside the two of them and Davis. Growing up in Compton, California, DeRozan had always dreamed about wearing a Lakers uniform. When he left LeBron’s house that afternoon, he believed he was just a few weeks away from the dream coming true.
“The next episode of my career was set,” he recalled.
But despite operating as if he was GM of the Lakers, LeBron was not the one with the power to make those calls. That job belonged to Pelinka, and while he, too, was eager to shake up the roster, he knew that adding DeRozan was more complicated than LeBron seemed to believe. The Lakers didn’t have the cap space to give DeRozan the sort of contract he was looking for, not with Davis and LeBron inked to long-term deals. DeRozan’s agent gave no indication that his client was willing to sign for a discount, and Pelinka was unable to make headway on a deal with the Spurs. DeRozan was crossed off the list, joining Lillard and Beal. With the draft and the start of free agency rapidly approaching, Pelinka and LeBron were running out of time and options. If they indeed wanted another star, they’d have to look elsewhere.
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• • •
Like DeRozan, Russell Westbrook grew up in Southern California, dreaming of playing for the Lakers. He was the sort of kid who cut middle school classes so that he could attend Lakers championship parades and who, when it came time to pick a college, chose UCLA so that he could stay close to home. Westbrook was drafted fourth overall by the Thunder in 2008, and in Oklahoma City he became one of the top players in the league, a fierce competitor with a relentless motor whose speed and athleticism stood out even when surrounded by some of the fastest and most athletic men in the world. But while he loved his time there, he always hoped to, at some point, end up back in LA.
In the summer of 2019, he thought he’d found his path. Kawhi Leonard, a fellow Southern California native, was about to become a free agent, and coming off a season in which he’d led the Raptors to the title and been named Finals MVP, he’d enter the market with all sorts of leverage. The Clippers and Lakers were two of his top suitors; this, Westbrook thought, was his chance. He called up Leonard and told him to tell the LA teams that if they wanted him, they would have to trade for Westbrook, too. Given that he was an eight-time All-Star and former MVP just one year removed from becoming the first NBA player since 1962 to average a triple-double in a season, Westbrook didn’t think including himself in a package would be hard to sell.
Leonard listened to Westbrook’s pitch—then formulated a plan of his own. He’d use Westbrook’s playbook, only instead, he’d pair up with a different All-Star: Paul George, Westbrook’s Thunder teammate. Leonard called George. He told him that Westbrook was angling to leave but that he had a way for George to get out first. A son of Southern California who had no interest in being stranded in Oklahoma City, George went to Thunder general manager Sam Presti and asked for a trade. Presti hadn’t planned on breaking up his team, but he recognized that, after three straight first-round playoff exits, the Thunder’s current core had likely hit its ceiling. He also understood that he was being presented with a unique opportunity, one he’d likely never have again. If the Clippers wanted to add the two stars, they needed to go through him. From the perspective of a negotiator, he couldn’t ask for more leverage.
Within a few days, the Thunder and Clippers had agreed to a deal. The Clippers, after signing Leonard, got George. In return, the Thunder received five first-round picks, the right to swap first-round picks in 2023 and 2025, one aging rotation player in Danilo Gallinari, and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, a talented second-year guard.[*3]
