Rob Pelinka’s rebuilding plan for the Los Angeles Lakers is nearly compete

The Lakers have a plan. You may have heard about it. With a few special free agents due for new contracts this summer and so few teams possessing the cap space to acquire them, the Lakers fancied themselves the front-runners.

But let’s travel backward a little bit.

Last February, after an attempted coup by her thirsty brothers, Jeanie Buss, the controlling owner and president of the Lakers organization, fired her brother Jim and much of his staff, including general manager Mitch Kupchak and communications director John Black. She replaced them with Lakers royalty. In came new president of basketball operations Magic Johnson, who spent his entire career with the franchise and led them to five championships, joined shortly after by general manager Rob Pelinka, the former agent of Johnson’s heir Kobe Bryant.

Johnson and Pelinka were tasked with shedding the anchor from around the drowning franchise’s neck.

The mistakes began the last time the Lakers had cap space, in 2016. Contracts handed to Luol Deng, Timofey Mozgov and Jordan Clarkson were given with only the present in mind. So when the new front office duo was put in place, the goal was immediately to shed salary.

Johnson took over just before last year’s deadline and traded Lou Williams, who was doing basically a toned down version of what he has done this year in the same building for the Clippers. Johnson nabbed a first-round draft pick from the Rockets in return, thanks to his willingness to add Corey Brewer’s 2017-18 salary. The Lakers franchise was off to the races.

Since Pelinka took over, the Lakers have gotten rid of two more of those 2016 deals. The 2017 draft has become a watershed moment for Pelinka’s staff, showing the foresight and negotiating clout necessary to rebuild the franchise after the mistakes of their predecessors.

First, the Lakers swapped Mozgov and D’Angelo Russell for the No. 27 pick in the draft and Brook Lopez. It established the trademarks of what we would come to know as a great Pelinka deal. Since last February, every time the Lakers have made a move, it has accomplished several things simultaneously. In the Nets trade, Pelinka found a new starting center to make his team more modern while also making room to draft UCLA freshman Lonzo Ball. The 27th pick, which eventually became Kyle Kuzma, was perhaps the best draft pick to be traded for bad salary in recent NBA history.

That same day, the Lakers flipped the 28th pick they got from Houston for Lou Williams into the 30th and 42nd picks from Utah. They drafted Josh Hart and Thomas Bryant, both interesting contributors, with those picks. Brewer’s contract will expire in July.

The plan neared its final stages yesterday.

Before the 3:00 p.m. trade deadline, the Lakers were able to flip Clarkson to the Cavaliers. Again, they killed a second bird with the same stone. Not only is Clarkson’s contract off the books, they were able to nab Cleveland’s 2018 first-round pick for the limited price of Larry Nance Jr., a versatile player who also carried money for next year and likely would have become expensive the following summer.

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What that means for anyone counting at home is that Pelinka and the Lakers were able to turn the Williams, Clarkson and Mozgov contracts into Kyle Kuzma, Josh Hart, Thomas Bryant and a 2018 first-round pick for the price of D’Angelo Russell and Larry Nance Jr. Whatever value they had in mind for all the players they’ve traded, their ultimate goal was to clear salary and become players in 2018 and 2019 free agency.

Thanks to Pelinka’s aggressiveness, they will have that cap flexibility the next two years, along with tons of young talent to make the team more appealing to free agents and more competitive if those players do sign in Los Angeles. How does #ThePlan sound for a Lakers rebuild hashtag?