#NBAFrontOffice: What happened to the Lakers and Knicks?

ByNBA FRONT OFFICE
July 10, 2015, 1:31 AM

— -- In the latest installment of the #NBAFrontOffice series, Tom Penn (playing the role of general manager), P.J. Carlesimo (head coach), Amin Elhassan (scouting director) and Kevin Pelton (analytics director) discuss the Los Angeles Lakers, New York Knicks and how the two struggling teams in the NBA's biggest markets can find ways to contend.

Want in on the conversation or have a question for one of the guys? Use #NBAFrontOffice.

Why have the Knicks and Lakers lost their touch?

Tom Penn: Polish and glamor aren't good enough anymore on their own. First and foremost, you've got to have teammates. Players are taking a more sophisticated look at where they want to go, and that's where they believe there's a chance to win. They don't want to do it all themselves, and/or they want to go to a place where they have a personal relationship with someone . So, the Los Angeles Lakers took a lot of heat for not having a good basketball story when they recruited guys this summer, but how could they? How could either the Lakers or New York Knicks have a good basketball story if you just put the guys on the floor who are there? There's nothing interesting or exciting about that.

That becomes the key factor everyone looks at because the money is the same in each of these places -- in fact, the money on a year-to-year basis is worse in the big markets because of taxes. The state income taxes in California are horrendous. It's 12 percent. And the city taxes and the state taxes in New York are horrendous. So if you're in Texas, Florida or Oregon, you don't have to pay any of those taxes. So when you get into this, it comes down to: Who am I playing with? And do I have a chance to win?

P.J. Carlesimo: Kevin Durant and LeBron James have proven that the small market thing doesn't fly. "You're not going to get endorsements. You can't be successful there like you can in L.A. and New York." That's not true. Those guys have proven that wherever you are, if you're good enough, you're going to get your endorsements. You're going to get your other things. That's not the deciding factor. For most of its history, the Lakers were always good, so if you went there you were going to go play with at least one superstar, if not more. The winning was a given. So, yes, the mystique is there. And if the money's the same and if the team is a really good team and you have the tradition that the Lakers had up until the last year or so, fine, then maybe L.A. can get you over the top. Now, it starts with the team. The money is going to be the same everywhere. I don't think the endorsements are a factor at all. The players don't care about L.A. now. L.A. is the team last year that lost however many games they lost. Admittedly, Kobe Bryant is coming back, that's a plus, but there is no magic to L.A. or New York.

Amin Elhassan: I've said this on the radio a bunch of times, but I'll say it one more time: The Lakers are stuck in 1996. They think they show the sizzle reel of going down Santa Monica Boulevard and the pretty blonde with the sunglasses with Randy Newman playing "I Love L.A." in the background and it's, "Give me a pen, where do I sign up? I can be a guest star on 'Friends'? I can be in an Alpo commercial?" These are things that appeal to people in the 1990s, but like Coach said, now I can get my Alpo commercial anywhere. I can be a guest star on the 'Big Bang Theory' from anywhere. I don't need to be on the coast, and I don't think the Lakers have grasped that yet. Or maybe they have now. Maybe, finally, the wake-up call has hit.

Carlesimo: These guys don't even remember. The players now couldn't tell you who Dave DeBusschere, Bill Bradley and Dick Barnett and those guys were. That was 1970. I love Madison Square Garden, but today's players don't care about playing at Madison Square Garden. The Knicks are this team that has made a lot of bad decisions and haven't been competitive. They've had moments and they've been pretty good at times, but that's the reality. They don't want to be there. People such as Phil Jackson, he's got 11 rings, but he's not coaching the team. So you're not going to play for Phil Jackson. If Phil shows the capabilities like Pat Riley in Miami, that'll be a plus. But at this point it's not. New York is not very good. L.A.'s better than New York right now, I think, with the recent moves, but I don't think there's any reason guys want to go there. If everything's equal, then you say, "Well, yeah, I'd rather be in New York or in L.A. rather than somewhere else." But everything's far from equal. They've got some major, major deficiencies that anyone can see. Players don't want to be a part of that.

What do they do now?

Elhassan: Every year we do the Future Power Rankings, and every year as a part of that component we're asked to vote what is the most important segment, and I always vote ownership is most important. If you have a wacky owner everything else trickles down. We see what's going on in Sacramento with unstable ownership. You see it with the Knicks. Jim Dolan has been probably the worst owner in professional sports over the past decade or so. And the Lakers now, when they used to have one of the best owners in Dr. Jerry Buss, his children haven't really carried his legacy in a proper fashion in terms of the way that they've run the team. And that obviously has an effect and impact. They really don't have a plan moving forward and I think it showed with LaMarcus Aldridge's first meeting. It was little substance and a lot of sizzle.

Kevin Pelton: I don't know if it was necessarily the analytics of the presentation to Aldridge weren't good enough and that's why he's going to San Antonio instead of the Lakers. But, the Lakers' roster is where it is because of the fact that they haven't valued assets over the years. They've thrown around first-round picks to sweeten deals but haven't had much regard that someday those could be valuable picks, like the one the Philadelphia 76ers have next year, which was originally from the Steve Nash trade. I think that all plays into it.

Elhassan: I do want to point out one thing: There is a difference between the Knicks' offseason and the Lakers' offseason. To me, it seems a bit as though the Knicks had a Plan A, Plan B and Plan C. Plan A was Greg Monroe, they swung and they missed, and they capitalized on Plan B by getting guys such as Robin Lopez, Arron Afflalo, Derrick Williams and  Kyle O'Quinn. Not big-name guys, but, again, good building-block pieces to maybe get to a point where free agents will consider you -- the A-listers, so to speak. The Lakers, on the other hand, went blue-chip-or-bust, but their strategy in landing a blue-chipper was awful. So now they're bust. And now you're scrambling and you invest in a guy like Louis Williams. These are last-second, 'Oh, I have to pay somebody'-type moves.

Pelton: I actually like what the Lakers did. Their cap space is still more valuable than the average team's cap space. And I don't know if I want to settle for clogging it up for several years with a guy who's not a top-tier free agent. One year of Roy Hibbert is not going to be worth his salary, but he will be a productive player and will make them more competitive next season, just like Lopez will make the Knicks more competitive. But the Lakers go into next summer relatively unencumbered. They may have Brandon Bass' contract and Williams' contract, but still should have more than enough cap space to add two max-level guys, assuming Kobe retires or is not on the books one way or another. And that, I think, is where now you can start to go out and make a legitimate push to find these top-tier players. And next year I think they will be more successful in free agency.

Penn: I agree, I like what the Lakers have done. They didn't have a grand Plan B to win the headlines this week, but they're slowly executing an effective Plan B that takes them through the valley, slowly. And they've got two young potential studs in D'Angelo Russell and Julius Randle. If they show any signs of stud-liness on the NBA level, free agents will want to come play with them. The Lakers need to keep adding pieces at good numbers, like Williams -- he's got a lot of life left in him -- and Bass, a solid rotation player with life left in him. Then you see what happens. You'll get free agents who say, "OK, now I've got something to work with." That's why LeBron went back to Cleveland, because they had a bunch of young guys whom he thought he could fix. Kyrie Irving, Tristan Thompson, Anthony Bennett, Andrew Wiggins -- LeBron goes, "Yeah, they don't know how to win, but if I go with them they will." That's all the Lakers need, for those guys to show that promise.

Elhassan: That's the part that I always struggle with as far as the moves the Lakers made. It's the incongruence. It doesn't fit. Hibbert is a specific style of player and Russell and Williams are completely opposite styles, in terms of up-tempo versus slowed down, half court versus a transition game.

Penn: A beggar can't be a chooser. You need warm bodies that can play.

Carlesimo: They're both better than what they had. They were both so bad that any moves are going to make them better. They've got veteran players now. They're better. The Lakers' biggest problem is that they're in the West. They are more competitive, but how much they can win? I don't know. But if they have more flexibility going forward that's a good thing, and a healthy Kobe will certainly be a good thing.