The Lakers can’t seriously be thinking about bringing Russell Westbrook back, can they?

Over the last two offseasons, the Lakers somehow went from a championship-caliber roster with financial flexibility and trade assets to spend to a 33-win team with — if you believe recent reports — no real avenues to improve the team. What’s even crazier is that the people who’ve overseen that disaster haven’t faced any real repercussions.

Shocking as this might be, those same folks are about to make another one with reports emerging that the Lakers are prepared to bring Russell Westbrook back for another season.

Yes. The Lakers tore down a potential dynasty, but won’t make any real changes to the quite possibly (maybe inarguably) least popular Lakers team in franchise history. This is what is on the line as the Lakers weigh their options in moving Russell Westbrook, who picked up his player option for $47 million Tuesday afternoon.

The front office simply cannot have spent last year pointing fingers at anyone remotely responsible for trading Westbrook, watch him take a blowtorch to the organization in his own exit interview, and expect fans to forget all of that. Sure, the Laker faithful can talk themselves into almost anything, but even a goldfish would have trouble forgetting the tire fire that was last season.

The Lakers owe it to fans, LeBron James, and, honestly, the sport of basketball to invest whatever they can to close out James’ prime with something more promising than whatever it was they subjected everyone to a season ago.

So, on the verge of some of the busiest days of the NBA year, I welcomed Harrison Faigen and Aaron Larsuel on a special Triangle episode of the Hook. There was discussion, fireworks, new clips, and Harrison laughing at Aaron and I yelling at each other.

You can listen to all that and more on our latest episode in the player embedded below, and to make sure you don’t miss a single one moving forward, subscribe to the Silver Screen and Roll podcast feed on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher or Google Podcasts.

And for a short-form recap pod, check out Lakers Lowdown, in which Anthony Irwin recaps the previous day’s news and gets you ready for the day ahead in LakerLand, every weekday morning on the Silver Screen & Roll Podcast feed.