Los Angeles Lakers: 3 takeaways from the 2018 offseason

The Los Angeles Lakers were among the busier teams this offseason, and leave with their strongest summer haul in a long time.

Every transaction the Los Angeles Lakers front office duo of Magic Johnson and Rob Pelinka has made over the past 17 months has been with idea of freeing up cap space and maintaining roster flexibility for the 2018 offseason. This is a complete 180 turn from the last leadership and their senseless free agent signings and draft picks that didn’t pan out, and the on-court product is showing this improvement.

Magic and Pelinka righted two of those wrongs in one trade by packaging Timofey Mozgov’s abysmal contract (four-years, $64 million) and D’Angelo Russell for Brook Lopez on an expiring deal and the rights to the 27th pick, which turned out to be Kyle Kuzma. It continued during this season by snagging another first round draft pick in (turned into Moritz Wagner) and a pair of expiring contracts (Channing Frye and Isaiah Thomas) by shipping off Jordan Clarkson and Larry Nance Jr. and their multi-year deals to the Cleveland Cavaliers.

All of these moves cultivated in this current roster, including signing the best player in the world in LeBron James. It’s kind of funny to think that the road to LeBron was made through a trade with the Cavs, along with the other moves the Lakers signed this season.

The 2018 offseason has to be the best summer for the Lakers since they brought in Shaquille O’Neal in 1996. It’s not often the league’s top player changes teams, and Magic built an interesting team around him, which is where we begin our first takeaway of the Lakers’ offseason.