General manager Mitch Kupchak has played the good soldier for Lakers vice president of basketball operations Jim Buss. And that may end up getting him fired.
Lakers CEO Jeanie Buss, Jim's sister, addessed the issue of Kobe Bryant's retirement in regards to its affect on Los Angeles' ability to develop its young players, according to USA Today Sports.
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She basically said that using Kobe's retirement as an excuse for not developing the young Lakers is a crock.
"I don't buy into that, that Kobe is such a distraction," Jeanie Buss said. "It's about managing how things go. I see a player like Kevin Garnett who has done well in Minnesota with the younger players. A guy like Dwyane Wade playing with younger players (in Miami). I think you see it around the league everywhere.
"I don't understand why that narrative has been created. It shouldn't be that way -- maybe Kobe's popularity (affects it more)? But I don't see what that has to do with training and practicing and things like that. Maybe I'm just naïve."
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It was Kupchak, who created that narrative in a conversation with ESPN in January.
"Under normal circumstances [in a season like this], at some point, you would probably concentrate on just developing all your young players," Kupchak told ESPN. "But we can't do that right now.
"This [season] is really a justified farewell to perhaps the best player in franchise history. And, God-willing, he's going to want to play every game and he's going to want to play a lot of minutes in every game, because that's just the way he is.
"And as long as that continues, which it should, then that's 30-35 minutes that you might give to a young player that you can't. How do you get a feel for your team going forward when you know that your best player is not going to be there next year? So it's really hard to go forward until he's no longer here."
The sentiment at the time was that Kupchak was defending coach Byron Scott over the team's struggles. He could, however, have been trying to justify Jim Buss wanting to extend his timeline for turning Los Angeles back into a playoff contender.
Jim Buss originally told The Los Angeles Times in 2014 that he would step down as VP of basketball ops if the Lakers couldn't compete to play in Western Conference Finals by the end of the 2016-17 season.
Since then, the Lakers have gotten progressively worse, and Kupchak's job could be tied to Jim Buss'.
"Since (Jim Buss' proclamation), it has become clear that Lakers general manager Mitch Kupchak would likely be part of this equation as well (of Buss' likely removal as vice president of basketball operations)," USA Today Sports reported.
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