The Lakers have options. But LeBron James may not like them all.

The day after the Los Angeles Lakers’ season ended in a sweep, General Manager Rob Pelinka told reporters that the team planned to “keep our core of young guys together.”

This quote did not escape the attention of Washington Wizards forward Kyle Kuzma, who drafted the Lakers in 2017.

“I’ve heard that before,” Kuzma wrote on Twitter added four crying emojis to the post on Tuesday.

Kuzma spent his first NBA season with the Lakers, playing alongside Lonzo Ball, Julius Randle, and Brandon Ingram, as well as a number of other young players who went on to play important roles on other teams.

All were shipped off or let go to acquire star players that the Lakers hoped could bring instant championship wins. In July 2019, after the Lakers missed the playoffs, Kuzma survived the Anthony Davis trade, which sent Ball, Ingram and Josh Hart to the New Orleans Pelicans for Davis. The Lakers won a championship the following season. But a year later, after losing in the first round of the playoffs, the Lakers traded Kuzma to Washington as part of a deal for Russell Westbrook, hoping he could help them win their next championship.

Heading into this off-season, the Lakers are faced with the question of whether they can or should be patient. On the one hand, they just got swept into the Western Conference Finals by a team from Denver who showed how steady building pays off. On the other hand, the Lakers are controlled by LeBron James, 38, who wants to win now.

It’s a tension that will tug at the Lakers as they decide what’s next.

“We’re obviously incredibly proud of this group reaching the Western Conference finals,” Pelinka said at a season-ending press conference on Tuesday, where he said the team’s goal was always to progress to a championship. to work. “After the trade deadline, we had one of the best records in the league. Maintaining that continuity becomes very important. We were eventually eliminated by a team with great continuity.”

The Lakers have had a lot of turnover in recent years, but their performance this year showed that they may have a foundation to build on. Darvin Ham, their freshman head coach, began to find rotations that worked, taking the Lakers from the worst record in the NBA to the conference finals.

“It’s just been a great year,” Ham said. He said he had the support of Pelinka and the Lakers owner Jeanie Buss, adding, “To get through those hard times early, you know, we don’t get that support, we probably won’t make it to this point. ”

Their selection is promising. After the trade deadline, the Lakers battled well, though they had little time to cheer. Guard Austin Reaves was a great fit alongside James and Davis, and Rui Hachimura, who was traded in January, provided the necessary offensive outbursts. Dennis Schröder was defensively critical. Lonnie Walker, Jarred Vanderbilt and D’Angelo Russell also had success moments in the postseason. Walker saved the Lakers with a 15 points fourth quarter against Golden State in Game 4 of the second round.

The Lakers aren’t built around youth this season, so it’s a bit of guess work to figure out what Pelinka means by the team’s “young core.” But Reaves is probably an important part of that.

Reaves and Hachimura are restricted free agents this year; Russell, Walker and Schröder are unrestricted free agents.

“We don’t know what team we have next year,” Davis said. “But whatever it is, whoever we have coming into training camp with the mindset to build that chemistry, build that base, me and LeBron are leading the way, trying to get back here and beyond.”

Due to the short time they spent together, it’s hard to say how much further they could get.

When James joined the Lakers as a free agent in 2018, some of his teammates were closer to his oldest son’s age than his. He said he knew being part of that team would take patience, and he said he was willing to wait. But it soon became clear that he was not enjoying the interim.

The Lakers missed the playoffs of that 2018/19 season, in part due to serious injuries to James and Ball. Midway through the season, James began hinting that he wanted the Lakers to get Davis from the Pelicans. That summer, the Lakers completed the transaction.

“Yes,” James told The Los Angeles Times when asked if he was happy that he no longer had to be patient. “Because I was patient last year, and you see where it got me.”

He showed a bit of the same impatience on Monday after the Nuggets won their series, saying that he “plays for nothing at this point in my career but winning championships.”

James alluded to retirement after 20 seasons.

“We’ll see what happens in the future,” James said. “I don’t know. I don’t know. I have a lot to think about, to be honest. I have a lot to think about, to be honest. Just for me personally, moving forward with the game of basketball, have I have a lot to think about.

He later said so explicitly ESPN And Bleacher report that he is considering retirement.

“LeBron has given as much to the game of basketball as anyone who has ever played,” said Pelinka. “If you do, you earn the right to decide whether to give more.”

Some saw James’s comments as a sign that he was exhausted from the past four months as he struggled to play through a torn tendon in his foot, or that his friend Carmelo Anthony, who announced his retirement this week, maybe made him wonder if he should.

It was also possible that he was trying to pressure the Lakers into giving him a roster that could win a championship next year – perhaps by finding a way to acquire his former teammate Kyrie Irving, a controversy-ridden point guard who attended Game 4 of the Western. Conference final despite restrictive new salary cap rules. Irving is phenomenally talented, but he’s struggled to make a difference on teams since he helped James win a championship in Cleveland in 2016.

The Lakers aren’t as accustomed to delayed gratification as most other teams. The wait between acquiring a big star to win and winning hasn’t lasted long if it’s worked.

The Lakers drafted Magic Johnson with the No. 1 overall pick in 1979 and won a championship in his rookie season, then four more over the next decade.

It took a few more years for their key signings to pay off in the summer of 1996 – Shaquille O’Neal (free agent) and Kobe Bryant (post-draft deal) – but they never missed the playoffs before winning three championships in a row. winning row.

They added Pau Gasol to Bryant’s team in February 2008, lost in the NBA Finals four months later, and went on to win back-to-back championships.

And Davis, like Johnson, immediately helped the Lakers win a championship. It was only James’ second year in Los Angeles.

Conversely, the Nuggets spent years building this team.

They waited as their point guard Jamal Murray tackled the long recovery that comes with an anterior cruciate ligament tear. Murray’s injury came in April 2021, after the Nuggets built a roster that appeared capable of winning a championship. His recovery has slowed down that timeline.

They could afford to wait, as their top star, Nikola Jokic, is still in his twenties.

The reward for their patience is a team that looked serene in challenging moments, whose players completely meshed together. This season’s newcomers immediately understood the culture.

But James is 10 years older than Jokic, which makes for a unique challenge. No star has ever played as well as at his age. He may not be at his own peak, but he’s still one of the best players in the game. The night Denver finished his season, he had 40 points – more than anyone else on either team.

James doesn’t want to wait, but quick fixes don’t always work; see the exchange for Westbrook that sent Kuzma to Washington. The Lakers missed the playoffs in Westbrook’s first season and traded him this season for young players who helped but couldn’t win everything.

Based on what the Lakers determined this year, they wouldn’t be starting from scratch if they chose to stay on their current path. But it may take more time than James has left.