NBA Lord's NBA Blog

NBA Lord's NBA Blog

Tuesday, February 21, 2017

Tomahawk Tuesday: Will Magic Johnson return the Los Angeles Lakers to glory?


Earlier today, the Los Angeles Lakers made a huge change to their front office in hopes of saving the franchise. The Los Angeles Times has details below:

On one of the most dramatic days in the history of the Lakers, the woman at the center of it all made drastic changes Tuesday aiming to help resuscitate the team.
Jeanie Buss, the Lakers’ governor and president, fired her brother, Jim Buss,  the head of basketball operations.
She fired general manager Mitch Kupchak, who has been a Laker for more than 35 years.
She fired John Black, the team’s spokesman for more than two decades.
She handed the reins of the franchise to a man she has known since she was 17 years old, one who calls her a sister. Magic Johnson, perhaps the best to ever play for the Lakers, is now the team’s president of basketball operations.
 What this news all means is that Magic Johnson is now in firm control of the Lakers' destiny. Jeanie Buss has given him the keys to the car and kicked out all the bums in the process. For the Lakers, this could be a franchise defining moment or it could not be. For all we know, Magic Johnson may go on to be just as incompetent  at running the franchise as Jim Buss and Mitch Kupchak, so by no means should Lakers fans be rejoicing just yet.

With that being said, it is encouraging for the Lakers that such an action was taken by Jeanie Buss. The team has been going nowhere for quite a while and Mitch Kupchak has done nothing that would give me any faith or confidence in his general managing abilities. He's made a series of stupid moves that have set the franchise back, so he absolutely deserves to be fired.

So, with that in mind, giving Magic Johnson a shot to run the franchise makes sense in that he's a new guy running the team and he also is the ultimate face of the franchise. Having Magic Johnson at the helm should attract quality free agents and it should also lead to better front office decisions. Magic knows the game really well and has been around championship teams his whole life. He knows what it takes to build a championship organization so it makes sense to give him a shot at running the team that he did so much for.



Ultimately,  I think this is a great move by the Lakers. They needed to make a front office change and bringing in Magic Johnson as the president of basketball operations should bring about better front office moves and give the franchise a much needed boost. It'll be interesting to see how it all shakes out in the end, but for now, I really can't complain about this move. This is the first front office move the Lakers have made that I've agreed with in a long time.



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