Ideally, you don’t want an ownership change to come right in the middle of a restructuring of a front office and franchise philosophy. It tends to cause some issues.
The Lakers find themselves in an awkward position. The Dodgerizing of the front office was well underway when Mark Walter abruptly sold the team to Bob Iger and Josh Kushner.
While it has remained status quo with the hirings already made, whether those hirings continue will be one of the bigger questions. Dan Woike of The Athletic recently provided some insight into how things are operating in the front office.
As he reported, the team hasn’t frozen all hirings as they posted a position for a video producer. However, the bigger roles are where things are less clear.
But other sources, including high-ranking ones, have acknowledged that high-end positions, particularly in basketball operations, aren’t actively being filled. While some people in the organization push back on the notion that the Lakers are in a “hiring freeze,” multiple sources acknowledged that it would be foolish for the organization to make hires of consequence while in this strange moment of its history.
On one hand, this is how things happen in any industry when there’s a new owner in charge. But at the same time, the Lakers, as noted, were in the middle of reshaping things and now are left in a weird limbo for the next few months.
Part of the uncertainty also stems from the fact that no one knows what the new owners’ philosophy will be. With Walter, he at least had a track record with the Dodgers that fans and the Lakers themselves could look at and set an expectation for what was in store.
Iger and Kushner have never done this before. Will they want to continue building out the front office? Will they want to cut costs like Tom Dundon in Portland?
All that leaves the Lakers in an awkward place, halfway through a rebuild but not fully there with no clue if there will be an end in sight.
You can follow Jacob on Twitter at @JacobRude or on Bluesky at @jacobrude.bsky.social.
