Podcast: How the 2019-20 Lakers came to be

Technically speaking, the Los Angeles Lakers began their quest for their 17th championship on Sept. 28, 2019, the day training camp started before what would ultimately be the longest season in NBA history.

However, the story of how the 2019-20 Lakers came to be actually started well before then. In this week’s episode of “The 30” — a podcast by Silver Screen and Roll — our own Christian Rivas and Jas Kang took a look back at the windy road the Lakers took to become the 2020 NBA champions.

To kick things off, the guys discussed the 2018-19 season, and how everything went off the rails after LeBron James suffered the most serious injury of his career during that cursed Christmas Day game against the Golden State Warriors. They also talked about how bleak things looked for the Lakers in the final few months of Magic Johnson’s tenure as president of basketball operations, and questioned if the franchise would have claimed its 17th championship if Johnson was still calling the shots for the organization.

Then, Christian and Jas got into how Rob Pelinka’s message of togetherness shined through as the Lakers played a relatively drama-free season, and how important it was that new head coach Frank Vogel was on the same page as everyone in the entire organization, from the top of the front office to the bottom of the roster.

Finally, to wrap things up, Christian and Jas talked about the Chris Paul to the Lakers speculation, and how feasible a trade would actually be.

You can listen to the entire episode in the player embedded below, and to make sure you never miss a single one moving forward, subscribe to the Silver Screen and Roll podcast feed on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher or Google Podcasts.

You can follow Jas on Twitter at @jaskang21, and Christian at @RadRivas.