The Lakers are still bad, and still betting on their legacy

The Los Angeles Lakers are worse than they were a year ago. That’s bad news for a rebuilding team that’s already seen the bottom. This is how you end up in purgatory. This is how you become the Sacramento Kings. You find new hope every summer, and that hope slowly fades into frustration and disappointment until the next batch of optimism provides temporary relief.

The Lakers, of course, are not the Kings: L.A. has rafters full of banners, a gargantuan stockpile of revenue, and the glamor of Los Angeles. This breeds Lakers exceptionalism, a concept we’ve discussed before. This is the belief among many within the fandom — including decision-makers — that the Lakers do not play by normal NBA team rules. The Lakers do not rebuild like other teams. The Lakers are not subject to the natural cycles of success like other franchises. The Lakers do not kneel before the Basketball Gods — the Lakers are above all that. The Lakers are special.

A naive belief in Lakers exceptionalism got the team where it is today: 29th place in the entire NBA without its 2018 first-round draft pick. Every indication is that the Lakers’ new basketball operations regime, led by Magic Johnson and Rob Pelinka, have bought into the Lakers exceptionalism playbook run by Jim Buss and Mitch Kupchak before them. (Kupchak had abandoned the blueprint in 2016; he was fired months later.) Every indication is that the Lakers, refusing to learn from the mistakes of the past six years, will chase top-of-the-line free agents this summer despite their dilapidated state.

It might work: Johnson has a certain je ne sais quoi that, no offense intended, Buss and Kupchak lacked. Lonzo Ball is a more attractive young point guard than D’Angelo Russell for a high-usage star to join, given his playmaking selflessness. Kobe Bryant is gone. Luke Walton still has a decent reputation. Los Angeles remains ascendant as a North American megapolis.

But you can very easily see the next Lakers’ summer gambit failing just like the previous ones had. Stars have not shown an interest in joining awful teams — in fact, the preference has been quite the opposite. In this new age of superteams, only one legitimate star has switched to a bad team as a free agent: LeBron James with the Cavaliers in 2014. That was a bit of a special case. The bias has instead been toward signing with good teams, no matter where they are based.

Nonetheless, the bad Lakers have been trying and trying and trying to land a big fish in free agency since their downfall after Dwight Howard left and Steve Nash fell apart. Howard walked away despite a full-court press. LaMarcus Aldridge declined. Carmelo Anthony didn’t choose Los Angeles. James didn’t entertain a meeting. Neither did Kevin Durant. L.A. native Russell Westbrook, long rumored to be a future Laker, signed an extension before hitting free agency. So did James Harden. DeAndre Jordan went elsewhere (twice). Blake Griffin stayed with the crosstown rivals.

There remains a whale out there — Paul George, who told the Pacers he wouldn’t re-sign in 2018 and got traded to the Thunder, and who is from Los Angeles. George and the Thunder visit the Lakers on Wednesday (10:30 p.m. ET, ESPN). But will George be that interested in the No. 29 team in the NBA after tasting some success with Westbrook in OKC? Adding Paul George to a core starring Ball, Brandon Ingram, and Kyle Kuzma doesn’t make a strong Western team. The Lakers need a package deal with DeMarcus Cousins or Isaiah Thomas — or the biggest whale of all, James — to really launch up the standings.

This is where you fall into the abyss: to really do this how Johnson and Pelinka apparently envision it, the Lakers — unable to land a single major talent in free agency and among the very worst teams in the league for several years now — either need to convince James to abandon his legacy in Cleveland and title chase to rebuild a legendary franchise for which he has no allegiance, or they need to convince two All-Star level free agents to join in one summer.

Only the Lakers could believe this possible.

And, truth be told, only for the Lakers could we believe this possible, even if only slightly. Stick the general managers of the Cavaliers, Thunder, and Pelicans with truth serum and they’ll express some amount of fear of the Lakers. Fans of other teams so greedily celebrate the Lakers’ July failures because they fear a return to Lakers dominance. Kick them while they’re down, because you never know when they’ll stand back up and stomp you into the earth.

The fear is diminished with every losing season, and you have seen many in the Lakers fandom — legitimately one of the most diverse and smart fandoms in the NBA, no joke — embrace the reality of rebuilding from scratch. The plan from those in power, however, still hinges on the idea that the teams in 29th place plays by different rules. We’ll see.