The Lakers are telling coaching candidates they don’t plan to bring in anyone above Rob Pelinka

The Los Angeles Lakers are getting ready to check one item off of their offseason to-do list, as they’re expected to hire Tyronn Lue to fill their vacant head coaching position sooner rather than later.

One would assume that the next item on their agenda would be figuring out who is going to replace former president of basketball operations Magic Johnson, but it seems as though that decision has already been made. According to Adrian Wojnarowski of ESPN, the Lakers’ front office has made it very clear during their search for a new head coach that general manager Rob Pelinka will be overseeing basketball operations going forward:

“Ultimately it’s Jeanie Buss, the owner, but Rob Pelinka, the general manager is running basketball operations. The candidates in this search have been told ‘Rob Pelinka will be your boss, he’s going to be running the team, we’re not bringing in somebody over him,’ and he’ll make his recommendation to Jeanie Buss about head coach.”

This backs up just about everything we’ve heard over the past several weeks, but this is arguably the most definitive reporting we’ve heard so far. However, none of the noise surrounding the team has been generated by the Lakers, at least not directly.

It’s been almost a month since Johnson abruptly stepped down as the team’s president of basketball operations and with the exception of a few light-hearted posts on social media and a pretty standard press release, no one from within the organization has addressed what the hell has been going on since. Even if the overwhelming assumption is that Pelinka will be assuming the role of president of basketball operations, it would make sense for the Lakers to provide some clarity on the situation given how unexpected and unprecedented it was.

Will we ever get that clarity? It’s tough to say, but if we do, it will likely be during Lue’s introductory press conference. Stay tuned.

For more Lakers talk, subscribe to the Silver Screen and Roll podcast feed on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher or Google Podcasts. You can follow Christian on Twitter at @RadRivas.