The Los Angeles Lakers’ front office is going to look very different under Magic Johnson and Rob Pelinka than it did with Jim Buss and Mitch Kupchak at the helm. The team’s scouting department, already a strength with the organization, is going to revamped, while keeping aspects of it that worked.
The analytics department is already getting a major facelift, as we first reported Saturday. A similar revamping of the scouting department came close to follow and the changes are just as impressive in that regard.
Bleacher Report’s Eric Pincus had the details in an incredibly well-reported piece that’s well worth your time.
According to his source, the scouting team will be broken into four tiers: College, international, D-League and current NBA players.
As the college scouting team has enjoyed consistent success over its existence, it will remain pretty much intact, per Pincus’ source. If it ain’t broke and so on and so forth.
The international tier, which under Buss and Kupchak was made up of only one scout, will see the biggest change. That scout, Antonio Maceiras, will be kept on, but will have more help in scouring the entire rest of the world for NBA talent.
As more and more players make their way to the D-League to prove their value to current NBA teams, the Lakers will add a couple scouts to help the South Bay Lakers’ president and CEO Joey Buss and current general manager Nick Mazzella keep an eye on that faction of talent.
Finally, according to Pincus’ report, the Lakers will add another couple scouts to director of player personnel Ryan West’s team. This tier will be mostly focused on current NBA players but will also help the college tier with their duties.
These changes are welcomed greatly as the Lakers look to utilize one of their major advantages: deep pockets. All NBA teams have to abide by the salary cap with on-court acquisitions, but there is no cap when it comes to people working in the team offices.
It comes as some surprise it took this long to start taking advantage of that spending ability, but Magic and Pelinka are setting a standard here. If we improvements continue across the organization like they have with the analytics and scouting departments, fans can comfortably feel with confidence the decisions the Lakers make will be as informed as possible.