Pelinka is really in danger this time! Lao Zhan is wasting his peak but is as stable as an old dog. Does the new boss still have the patience?

Translator's Note: This article was originally published by CBS and the author is Sam Quinn. The data in the article are as of the time of publication of the original article (October 22, local time). The opinions in the article have nothing to do with the translator and the platform.

The Lakers are moving into a new era, but why are the management still stuck in the past?

The NBA opening game has come to an end, and the Los Angeles Lakers ended in defeat. If this sounds familiar, it should. Tuesday was LeBron James' eighth opener since joining the team in 2018, and the Lakers have only won one of them. The loss in the opening game itself is not worth panic at all. After all, it is only one of 82 regular season games. But it’s worth noting that we seem to have the same discussion after every opener.

The Lakers lack enough shooters around their big-name players. In Tuesday's game, they made just eight of 32 three-point attempts. In 2022, they made only 10 three-pointers in 40 attempts, and then set a record for the worst shooting performance in the first four games in NBA history, even triggering public dissatisfaction from James himself. "We don't have that many sharpshooters on the team," he complained in November. When the team started 2-5 in 2018, they shot just 33% from three-point range - a lineup built on Magic Johnson's bizarre philosophy of "emphasis on ball handlers and light shooters." Considering that James has reached the Finals for eight consecutive years and is surrounded by 3D players, this choice seems particularly strange. But given that the Lakers have made such choices many times in the past eight years, it is obvious that this is a team-building idea that the team management agrees with.

The Lakers have never been able to find a trustworthy center. Deandre Ayton had an extremely inconsistent performance in his Lakers debut. His defense was hit and miss, grabbing just six rebounds and getting to the free throw line just once, and his long-standing preference for the outside rather than fighting inside like a big man of his size was on full display in this game. Last season, Hayes was more or less left out of the playoff rotation despite being the team's only big man; before that was the failed Christian Wood experiment; and before that was the "athletic big man collection" season of Gabriel and Damian Jones that was the answer to the failed pairing of Dwight Howard and DeAndre Jordan.

The team's perimeter defense still lacks one or two defensive leaders. Marcus Smart is playing better than he did in his two injury-plagued seasons with the Grizzlies, but he's nowhere near the peak form he was when he was named Defensive Player of the Year. He's better at guarding bigger players, as are most of the Lakers' perimeter players. Vanderbilt couldn't stay on the floor offensively; LaRavia is a great team defender but not suited to guarding high-usage stars. Different versions of this type of defender rotated through the team year after year - Patrick Beverley, Cam Reddish, Kent Bazemore, Trevor Ariza, and none of them could make Lakers fans forget about Alex Caruso.

Again, this is just the opening game. The Lakers are currently 0-1, not 0-10. Those flaws aside, they're still a pretty good team, and they'll be even better with James back in a few weeks. But the recurring problems are hard to ignore — especially as the Lakers clearly find themselves in a changing era. The star leading the team Tuesday night wasn't James, but Luka Doncic, who had a phenomenal performance. When their own star scored 43 points, 12 rebounds and 9 assists but lost at home, the quality of the team's management was inevitably questioned. Doncic will be the cornerstone of the Lakers in the next few years, and the three-year contract extension signed during the offseason has ensured this.

But the roster of players surrounding him is still full of unknowns. Think back to another game on Tuesday: The Rockets and Thunder are already fully capable teams competing for the championship. They are younger, deeper, and almost completely dominant than the Lakers. Having Doncic is the starting point against them, but beating them requires more chips. It all starts with whether the decision-makers can assemble a reasonable lineup.

What will be Pelinka’s future under the new boss?

In the past ten years, Pelinka's status with the Lakers has been rock solid. How many general managers can fire three coaches in a row and appoint new ones without ever having their job threatened? Or after dismantling the championship lineup, he tried to make up for his mistakes by trading Russell Westbrook? None of this swayed him. Pelinka is a figure in the core circle of the Lakers and once served as Kobe Bryant's agent, so he has never been scrutinized as strictly internally as the outside world.

But the Lakers are in the process of selling. Although Buss remains the official chairman of the team after Mark Walter acquired a majority stake in the team, it is difficult to imagine that the multi-billion dollar buyer will have no say in the team's operators. After Walter purchased the Dodgers in 2012, he replaced the general manager within two years. What follows is the greatest period in franchise history: the Dodgers could win their third championship in six years in the next ten days.

This type of boss will never be happy to see management make the same mistakes year after year. Although the Dodgers enjoy the institutional advantages of a non-salary cap sports league, their success relies on both blockbuster transactions and detailed operations. Not only are they the richest team in baseball, they're also the smartest. They will never repeatedly bet on failed high draft picks, passing stars and big-name players without building a complete lineup that can make up for their shortcomings.

This is exactly what the Lakers have done since James joined. Frankly speaking, this is also an important reason why they wasted a lot of time in the latter part of James' career. On Tuesday night, they failed again with Doncic's killer performance. Clearly, no one in management wants to make the same mistake again. Opening-game crises have varied in importance over the years, and the Lakers haven't always lost an entire eighty-two-game season. But all Lakers fans are tired of repeating the same discussion every October. If the problems exposed by Tuesday's defeat continue to develop, policymakers will face unprecedented pressure to reverse the situation before it is too late.