The Thunder’s NBA Finals run highlights the Lakers’ dumbest misfire

Alex Caruso’s stellar play for the Thunder in the NBA playoffs has been a very painful reminder for Lakers fans of Rob Pelinka’s biggest faux pas.

Rob Pelinka has delivered some bread from heaven over his time with the Lakers, but he’s been part of some thunderstorms as well.

“Part of” is the operative phrasing there, because the only things Pelinka is better at than swindling his dumbest friend over fancy cold brews are deflecting blame and keeping his job. So while sending out Ivica Zubac for Mike Muscala in order to appease JaVale McGee — in a move so instantly disastrous that Clippers consultant Jerry West was basically openly laughing at his old team in the moment, and execs were still joking about years later — was bad, it could be laid at the feet of Magic Johnson. The Russell Westbrook trade is what fully sunk that version of the Lakers from contention, but Pelinka managed to almost entirely throw his stars under the bus for that one.

Still, even with those acknowledged as the most damaging trades he’s been a part of, they won’t go down as the brainless decision the Lakers have made under Pelinka’s stewardship. That ignominious (dis)honor will always go to the organization’s decision to lowball and undervalue Alex Caruso, who is, through no fault of his own, salting that perpetually festering mental wound for Lakers fans all the way to the 2025 NBA Finals. Making it feel so much worse is that the mistake was so avoidable, pointless and able to be instantly judged as bad by anyone who watched him play then or since.

Not only is Caruso’s run through the Western Conference with the Oklahoma City Thunder seemingly designed to torture Lakers fans in some sort of Lovecraftian fashion beyond our comprehension, the worst part is that it absolutely did not have to be like this. Letting Caruso go was instantly idiotic, it has only aged worse as he continues to embody almost everything these Lakers have lacked except for being tall, which arguably doesn’t even matter when the 6’4 bald eagle made of granite out-physicalled Nikola Jokic — the player the Lakers have looked most hopeless against for the better part of three years — and then defensively dismantled a team L.A. lost to in five games in back-to-back series.

The Lakers don’t have the defensive personnel of the Thunder, but Caruso would have helped bridge that gap.

I can already hear some of your complaining in the comments — “Why is he still on this? Just let it go. Caruso is not even that good.” — and I think it’s worth addressing directly. Well, not that last point, that’s not even worth arguing about with someone after the last few years, but the rest of it. I think the reason this bothers some of us so much is that it punctures the illusion of competency and infallibility that every sports fan wants to have about their favorite team’s GM. Having a mistake this loud that wasn’t even justifiable at the time makes it hard to ever fully trust this brain trust to be the right people to hit on the margins necessary to build their next title team, a skillset which matters a lot more now that they once again have a clear top-five player in Luka Doncic.

Every executive has bad trades or signings, but letting a player go for zero basketball benefit, under the old Collective Bargaining Agreement where the only penalty for spending more money was just spending more money, is inexcusable, and in a sentence Pelinka will love, not just blameable on him.

In a move they will claim was not in pursuit of luxury tax savings but that offered no other actual benefit, the team declined to accept Caruso’s offer to take less money in the summer of 2021, holding firm to their offer of three years, $21 million and the honor of saving Jeanie Buss some money. Shockingly, that was not persuasive to an undrafted free agent seeking their first taste of generational wealth, and the Lakers — worth over $7 billion in Forbes’ latest evaluations — let Caruso walk to the Bulls over a $3 million per year salary difference. Unfortunately, JJ Redick wasn’t working for them at the time, because as a podcaster, even he couldn’t help but laugh at the disrespect of their initial offer to Caruso, meaning he might have argued to raise it if he were around. Alas.

Again, Pelinka has traded for Luka since then, and helped build a team that raised a banner prior, which some, like people whose initials are JB, would say makes up for any and all ills. But you know who would be the perfect defensively versatile, offensively low-usage wheel-greaser of a backcourt partner for their current superstar? That’s right, still Alex Caruso, which is why it is both so gratifying to see him finally get his proper respect nationally away from the Lakers sphere, and aggravating that it couldn’t be while helping the L.A. raise another banner.

It would be different if the Lakers had gained anything from letting Caruso walk, but if they did, it’s hard to see it. If Talen Horton-Tucker had proven worthy of selecting over Caruso in a choice the Lakers didn’t have to make, then things might sting less. Instead, the Lakers kept THT for just one year before trading him for an amateur photographer and podcaster, who they then had to spend money and a second-round pick to get the Magic to take for Mo Bamba, a player who I’ll always remember most for being cut later in the summer of 2023 after the coaching staff hated him so much they leaked that he was healthy ahead of a playoff game so it would be clear they were DNP-CDing him. For those keeping track at home, that means that not only did the Lakers lose Caruso for nothing, but the guy they kept required multiple assets just to dissolve into nothing (while spending some of that pittance of money they saved in the first place).

Did the flexibility of letting him walk help? Also… probably not. The Lakers turned it into Kendrick Nunn and Malik Beasley, the latter of whom left for nothing after playing well during arguably the worst Lakers season ever, and the former of whom required second-round picks to swap for Rui Hachimura, who the Lakers also may attach picks to in order to upgrade on this summer. So in the widest possible terms, I guess the post-Caruso transaction tree isn’t over, but that’s also kind of like if your friend came over, smashed your grandma’s antique heirloom plate set, and then you waited to judge them until seeing how well they glued them back together. At this point, it seems overly forgiving. It was really, truly an indefensible decision, and it’s only looked worse since.

This story isn’t all bad, though. Well, it is for Lakers fans, but not for Caruso, who upon reaching a team with a GM who knows ball, received an extension worth over double the salary the Lakers were unwilling to match three seasons ago, with three years more miles on him in a less forgiving cap environment for the third-smallest market in the NBA. As punishment for his errors, the Lakers have extended and promoted Pelinka TWICE — he is now president of ownership meat shield operations, promoted from vice president of the same position — the second time because he got lucky enough that a sneaker salesman he was friends with got promoted to Mavericks GM and decided to make a career-destroying move with him over Japanese iced coffee. I guess Pelinka deserves credit for being smart enough to accept, but it’s not like keeping Caruso would have gunked that up anyway even if nothing else changed.

Unfortunately, the Lakers made certain we’ll ultimately never know, and so Caruso’s exemplary play en route to a likely second ring is a nationally televised reminder that for as good as we all felt in the aftermath of the Luka trade, there are also reasons to doubt this brain trust’s ability to identify and retain winning basketball players and build a championship roster around him. Because even when they alchemize gold out of thin air in a scene straight from one of Rob’s most-cited novels, they can’t be relied upon to always recognize and value it.