With their 102-96 win in Game 4 of the 2020 NBA Finals on Tuesday night over the Eastern Conference champion Miami Heat, that gave them a commanding 3-1 series lead the Western Conference champion Los Angeles Lakers are now just one win away from their first title in 10 seasons and their 17th NBA title overall in franchise history, which would tie the Boston Celtics for the most for one franchise in NBA history. Considering all that has happened for the Lakers so far this season from having the second best mark in the NBA, then the tragic loss of one of the best players in Lakers history, the Coronavirus (COVID-19) Pandemic hit that shut down the NBA for nearly five months, the Lakers not playing to their high level in the seeding games. They been through a lot, but they got their act together in their first postseason appearance in six seasons and are now at the doorstep of their main goal for this season. Being there from the tough times over the previous six seasons to where they stand now about to add to their storied history was the latest guest on NBATV’s “#NBA Together” as the restart got underway in Orlando, FL.
Among the first things the host of
“#NBATogether” Ernie Johnson, lead host of TNT’s “Inside the NBA,” presented by
Kia asked in his virtual interview with Rob Pelinka, Lakers Vice President of
Basketball Operations and General Manager, sporting a “Black Live Matter”
hooded shirt in gray, white and Lakers colors of purple and gold from the ESPN
Wide World of Sports in Orlando, FL was Pelinka saying to Johnson how he has
been a “bridge” for the league during its hiatus with the programming of
“#NBATogether” the last 16 weeks.
Mr. Pelinka also complimented Johnson on
his sneaker attire during the hiatus saying that it has been “off the charts.”
He even said that he would try to get him some Kobe Bryant shoes. To which
Johnson responded, “If it’s free, it’s for me.”
With the restart back at the end of July
about to get underway in Orlando, when Johnson asked if the Lakers were ready
for what has been a incredible carpet ride to The 2020 NBA Finals going 12-3 in
the first three rounds against the Portland Trail Blazers, Houston Rockets, and
Denver Nuggets, Pelinka said “Yeah.”
He then said that NBA Commissioner Adam
Silver and Executive Director of the National Basketball Players Association
(NBPA) Michelle Roberts built the equivalent of “basketball utopia.”
“I mean, it’s just unbelievable the job
they’ve done to construct this from the game venues to the safety of the
campus,” Pelinka added.
He also said that a report before the games got underway of zero positive cases of COVID-19, which continued that way from the seeding games all the way to now Game 5 of the 2020 Finals, which will be played on Friday night at 9 p.m. on ABC.
The work the NBA has done in putting together
what they did for the league’s restary Pelinka said is a testament to the
dedicated, focused, and determined hard work of everyone on the so-called “NBA
bubble” from the players, coaching and personal staffs of what began as 22
teams at the complex as well as the staff and personal of “The Association” as
well as the medical staffs that tested the players and the staffs of the hotels
that the teams stayed in.
“We can’t wait to get to the games. To be
able to do it, and to be healthy so far, we’re all humbled,” Pelinka said.
One of the biggest sacrifices the players,
support staff and the front office of the teams that began in Orlando, to now
with the Lakers and Heat remaining had to make at the start of this was to come
to Orlando without their family and friends, until the Semifinals where the NBA
allowed a certain number of family to come to campus.
For Pelinka, that meant being without his
wife, pediatrician Dr. Kristin Pelinka and their two children, a 12-year-old
son and 10-year-old daughter in a tough time in our country not just dealing
with the COVID-19 Pandemic but the social unrest in the wake of the shooting
deaths of Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, and Rayshard Brooks among the few, and
the shooting of Wisconsin native Jacob Blake back in late August that left him
paralyzed from the waist down.
He did say though that things were good on
the home front without him there and that his wife Kristin has been “amazing.”
Like all of us, Pelinka said that he has
seen his family, especially his children watch all that has unfolded in our
world from the just mentioned social injustice that has taken place in our
nation. He has seen his kids come to understand how important everything that
has taken place is and how the NBA and its players union have come together to
bring awareness to the social unrest and how important it is that we all are
registered to vote and that we do exercise that democratic right in the lead up
to the General Election and on the day of it on Nov. 3.
“They are excited too that I’m a part of
it, and they understand that dad is doing something that’s bigger than
basketball right now with this team,” Pelinka said of how his kids feel about
him being a part of the restart in Orlando.
Pelinka said the Lakers organization from
the players on the floor to the front office bringing social injustice to the
forefront of our nation was something that was that was a part of the
conversations they have had since coming to the home of Disneyworld to now.
At the forefront of this grand charge has been four-time Kia MVP and three-time Finals MVP LeBron James and seven-time All-Star Anthony Davis, who is playing in The Finals for the first-time in his career.
James has been incredibly outspoken about
the social unrest in our country to his initiative that he launched, with help
from a number of prominent athletes like Super Bowl MVP of the NFL’s Kansas
City Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes and wideout DeAndre Hopkins of the
Arizona Cardinals; All-Star guard of the Portland Trail Blazers Damian Lillard
and two-time WNBA champion of the Los Angeles Sparks Lisa Leslie back in late
August called “More Than a Vote,” that is focused on combating systemic and
racial suppression of the minority vote. The initiative is also about
recruiting young, healthy volunteers to work a polling stations across the
nation so older, more vulnerable poll workers do not have to put their health
at risk.
James like a lot of the league’s players during
their media sessions during the restart to have taken the time to bring their
concerns about what is going on to the forefront of people’s minds like the
death of Ms. Taylor and Mr. Floyd to the importance of voting this election
cycle.
Also, James has taken to social media to
get the importance of what he and the NBA are doing as well.
While Davis has not taken a lot to social
media to talk about the difficult climate our world is in at the moment,
Pelinka said to Johnson that he thinks just as deeply about these issues.
What Pelinka said to Johnson that stood
out to him early on being in Orlando for the restart is the kind of mental
grind that was going to take place being away from your family and friends and
being restricted on how you can maneuver on off days and after practice was
over.
“And I think the team that has the
greatest togetherness is going to have an advantage,” Pelinka said about what
took place of now fans on hand in the early part of the restart. “Early in our
scrimmage games, we’ve had the loudest benches because these guys love each
other like brothers and I think they talk about these really deep issues
together and wrestle with how they can bring change and awareness. And they
also have a lot of fun, and that’s something about our culture we really
appreciate.”
Before being VP and GM with the Lakers,
Pelinka was a sports agent, who founded The Landmark Sports Agency, whose
client list included the late Hall of Famer to be in Kobe Bryant and his
longtime teammate Derek Fisher, the current head coach of the Sparks; Eric
Gordon and James Harden of the Rockets; Andre Iguodala of the Heat; Buddy Hield
of the Sacramento Kings; two-time Finals MVP and two-time NBA champion Kevin
Durant of the Brooklyn Nets; former Laker Sasha Vujacic and current NBATV
studio analyst Channing Frye.
Prior to that, Pelinka was chasing his own
basketball dream that took him to the University of Michigan after he graduated
from Lake Forest High School in Illinois.
In his four years in Ann Arbor, MI,
Pelinka helped the Wolverines reach the NCAA Tournament Final Four in three of
his four years, reaching the championship game three out of those four years.
He was a part of Michigan’s 1988-89 title
team where as a true freshmen had teammates that would go on to either have a
cup of coffee in the NBA or have pretty nice NBA careers in sharpshooters Glen
Rice, who won a title with the Lakers in 2000 and Terry Mills; Loy Vaught, who
played most of his career with the Los Angeles Clippers in the 1990s; Rumeal
Robinson, and Sean Higgins.
In the last half of his career at
Michigan, where the team finished as the national runner-up for back-to-back
seasons played alongside current NBATV and NBA on TNT analyst Chris Webber,
Juwan Howard, current ESPN NBA studio analyst Jalen Rose, Jimmy King, Ray
Jackson, and Eric Riley, who are known as the “Fab Five.”
When asked about his experience playing
with the “Fab Five,” Pelinka said that he was told by Webber and Rose that he
was there to space the floor and hit corner three-pointers, and to keep the
basketball squads Grade Point Average (GPA) “really high.”
Pelinka called Webber a “good friend” to
this day, while saying Rose was the “heart and soul” of the team as well as the
“spiritual anchor.”
One of the toughest moments from that time
though was the famed timeout that Webber called in the title game against the
North Carolina Tar Heels in 1993, which they did not have any left.
Pelinka said that, he did what any other
great teammate would do in that tough situation his teammate was in. He was in
Webber’s corner and let him know that they would have not been in that position
without how he played leading to that moment.
“He’s learned a lot from that,” Pelinka
said about that tough moment in Webber’s basketball career. “I think we go back
to that moment now and laugh about it. But I just say, ‘thank goodness I had
one championship ring to fall back.’ I do have that ’89 one because without it
I’d still be pissed about that play.”
Pelinka was playing with future NBA
prospects even before he got the Ann Arbor at a so-called pro-amateur summer
league where he played against local Illinois stars that would go on to NBA
fame in Mark Aguirre, Tim Hardaway, Sr., the late Kevin Duckworth, and current
analyst for the Chicago Bulls on NBC Sports Chicago Kendall Gill.
That summer league was Michael Jordan, who
was in the infancy of his NBA stardom, fellow Hall of Famer, two-time NBA
champion with the Detroit Pistons Isiah Thomas.
“I was a young kid from the suburbs and I
got invited to be on a team, and I come down. And that’s where I kind of
refined my game,” Pelinka said of that time.
Pelinka’s late father before he passed
packaged some stuff, he got from the addict that he wanted to send to his son,
that included an old program with Jordan on the cover of this Pro-Am league. As
Pelinka said he was going through the roster and sees his name against future
NBA stars, which he called one of his “favorite possessions,” his dad passed on
to him.
That ability to play with the greats then
where he found his niche and became that important glue-guy to the Michigan
teams was something Pelinka learned from an early age from his father was a
coached and public school teacher, who Pelinka said “dedicated” himself to the
sport of basketball.
When Pelinka was two years old, his father
was an architectural design teacher, and then taught shop, where he taught kids
how to fix a car and welding.
At around age three or four, Pelinka said
how his dad and he went up to his shop and he built the first basketball hoop
out of black wrought iron that stood five feet.
This is where Pelinka’s basketball journey
began where he shot hoops, that took him from being a sports agent to now the
GM of the most storied franchise in professional sports.
“I guess kind of my faith informs me that
life just unfolds as it supposed to,” Pelinka said about his journey. “I
studied really hard in law school and business school, and I started out as a
corporate lawyer. But missed basketball. And I got a call just sort of out of
the blue to work at a sports agency. And of course, that’s where I spent 20
years doing prior to being a general manager.”
For Pelinka, he contributes his success as
a sports agent by having the perspective of how could he help someone else help
their life be better?
As an agent, Pelinka said he enjoyed being
behind the scenes of working for the remarkable players, particularly his most
well-known client in Kobe Bryant, who he met at the sports agency he worked for
in Brentwood, CA in 1998.
When the two first met in his office then,
Pelinka said that Kobe told him that he watched him with those “Fab Five”
teams, and that he would have gone to Duke University or the University of
Michigan had he not decided to go straight to the NBA right out of Lower Merion
High School in Philadelphia, PA.
A day later, Bryant called Pelinka to set
up a lunch meeting at UCLA’s campus where they had chicken wings.
“It was kind of an instant brother,”
Pelinka said of the start of he and Bryant’s working relationship. “There was
just something amazing about our connection.”
That connection led to some amazing
conversations where Pelinka would talk about his days as a member of the “Fab
Five” to where he would take joking jabs at Pelinka and his wife, a Duke
graduate about the famed Duke versus Michigan rivalry.
Bryant was particularly drawn to Blue
Devils head coach Mike Krzyzewski, who was his coach on the 2008 and 2012 Gold
medal Summer Olympic teams.
There was a period of time when Bryant was
still with the Lakers and they were looking for a new coach that Krzyzewski’s
name came up in the rumor mill.
It was something that Bryant and Pelinka
thought was a good idea at that time. Pelinka’s wife Kristin though when she
saw that rumor on ESPN at the couple’s home was in tears.
“He was intrigued with the college game,
and I think really appreciated the time he had with Coach K. with USA
basketball,” Pelinka said.
It is that kind of connection that Pelinka
had with Bryant and fans of the five-time NBA champion, two-time Finals MVP, 18-time
All-Star, four-time All-Star Game MVP, 15-time All-NBA selection and 12-time
NBA All-Defensive selection and Oscar winner that brought him, Bryant’s wife
Vanessa, and their three other daughters, and all of us to unbearable tears
when he and his second oldest daughter Gianna died in a helicopter crash along
with seven other people outside of Los Angeles back on Sunday, Jan. 26.
“He was such a gift. He was such a gift to
the world,” Pelinka said of Bryant. “And I think so much about 20 years of
being a best friend, and what that meant. And I’m so grateful for it.”
“When he walked into a room, he just had
this electricity about him that was otherworldly. To have someone like that as
a friend in your life for 20 years is just—words can’t really describe the
impact and power of that.”
How close were Bryant and Pelinka, during
Bryant’s 2003 sexual assault case, it was Pelinka who spent a great deal of
time with him, accompanying him on trips to Eagle, CO where the trial took
place. It was Pelinka who confirmed the news of Bryant’s second child in the
aforementioned late “Gigi,” whose god father was Pelinka. When Bryant was an
unrestricted free agent in the summer 2004, it was Pelinka who confirmed to the
media that his client would either remain in L.A. with the Lakers or join
L.A.’s other team in the Clippers, even while rumors circulated that Bryant
would join the Bulls. Days later, Pelinka negotiated a new seven-year, $136.4
million contract that Bryant signed.
Pelinka also described Bryant as a “real
life superhero” that had abilities that other human beings do not have, that go
beyond the basketball court.
He said that if you were a friend of
Bryant, and you hit a rough patch, he would find a way forward.
“The richness of being able to have a
brother and a friend like that, it’s one of the greatest gifts of life,” he
said about his friendship with Bryant.
He added that being the godfather to
Gianna, and to see her “bright spirit” that was going to change women’s
basketball as well as the world for the better is some of the most “valuable
gifts” Pelinka has had in his life.
When Pelinka spoke at Bryant’s memorial
service back in February for 17 minutes, he talked about three versions of his
famed client, none of which referenced his career on the hardwood.
Among the things Pelinka talked about was
when he answered his phone that morning West Coast of Jan. 26 time while he was
in church, which is something he never does.
Pelinka said that there was something in
his spirit that said to him to check his phone. He checked the phone, and he
received a text message from Bryant while he was on the helicopter with the
message asking Pelinka to help a young girl that he wanted to help make her
life better. That girl was Alyssa Antobelli, who also passed in that helicopter
crash along with her mother and father Keri and John.
That text message was Bryant reaching out
to Pelinka asking how he could help the young Antobelli get a sports internship
with a prominent baseball agent.
“It just seemed to me in some sense like
this was the essence of him, even though people saw him as this killer on the
court. This warrior ‘Mamba Mentality,’” Pelinka said of Bryant as a person. “He
was an unbelievable father. He was an unbelievable like uncle to my kids.
Unbelievable husband to Vanessa, and that’s what I got to see for 20 years.”
“I think the world started to get a better
understanding of that in his sort of last act in terms of what he was doing for
the WNBA, and what he was doing in film and in books. That moment really just
spoke to me about the essence of him. He was thinking about other people and
making their lives better.”
The death of Bryant is something that
really brought home the importance of making sure the relationships you have
with people that you care about are intact, and if they need to be repaired
that you have to put in the work to repair them.
That was the case with Pelinka and one of
the NBA’s all-time greats in Earvin “Magic” Johnson where the two joined forces
in the front office of the Lakers to get them back to championship form. The
pairing did not work and it led to some internal strife to the point where last
season Johnson in an impromptu presser announced his resignation from the
Lakers front office without even notifying Ms. Buss or Pelinka before the
team’s last game of the 2018-19 season versus the Trail Blazers that April.
Pelinka said to that any relationship that
he has had as well as other people with a friend, family member or co-worker
that you will hit adversity in that relationship. But he believes that what
carries you through those moments is grace, which he has said has taken place
with him and Johnson, even though when things were fresh when that relationship
was on serious fire that Pelinka was accused of backstabbing the Lakers’ great.
Pelinka has said that Johnson has continued to be a great friend to him, especially in the moments after Bryant passed as mentioned in late January. Johnson has continued to converse and check in with Pelinka since the Lakers have been in Orlando during the restart to how he is doing. How the team is doing?
“I think great things often can come from
adversity,” Pelinka said. “I think that’s just something that I believe for any
relationship. I think I believe it for any team that wins a championship, you
got to go through adversity to reach something real and good.”
The other part that made Pelinka a great
agent was he understood that it was more than just being a ruthless negotiator
when getting their client their next big contract. That he had to be a mentor,
a big brother where they have to be right there with them in the trenches in
tough times, which Pelinka said he loved.
Pelinka has taken those lessons and
applied them as the GM of the Lakers, where he and President Jeanie Buss wanted
to build the culture of the team around how could they service the players on
the roster from taking care of their needs that will allow them to be the best
version of themselves on the hardwood.
When the Lakers take the hardwood tonight,
they will have a chance to not only win their first title in a decade but win
their 17th title in franchise history, which would as mentioned
earlier tie the arch rival Boston Celtics for the most by one team in the NBA.
It would not only cap a great season that
has seen the Los Angeles Lakers have to deal with the loss of one of the most
beloved players in franchise history and NBA history in Kobe Bryant but it would
put a stamp on all the hard work they put in bringing themselves back to the
top of the NBA mountain after not making the playoffs the previous six seasons.
Along with that it would give Rob Pelinka
his first title as Lakers GM and put the stamp on the fact that he can do what
most think was not possible, build a championship roster for a franchise that
expects to win them every year. An expectation he saw his famed client deliver
five times in 20 seasons.
It would also cap a basketball journey
that has seen him play alongside great players from his youth, to representing
them as an agent and now representing the most storied organization in pro
sports in the front office for the last three years and hopefully many more.
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