Rob Pelinka: Lakers will hire two assistant general managers

There seems to be a good amount of doubt, both across the NBA and among Los Angeles Lakers fans, that Lakers general manager Rob Pelinka will end up successfully upgrading his team's roster this summer to the point where it becomes a legitimately championship-caliber roster. Yet that is the task that lies ahead of him now that the team has been eliminated from the playoffs.

The Lakers have a 27-year-old MVP-level franchise player in Luka Doncic, a 41-year-old superstar-adjacent player in LeBron James who is about to become a free agent and a borderline All-Star guard in Austin Reaves who is expected to opt out of his contract and become a free agent himself. Other than that, they have a few good complementary players, but they lack depth, two-way players, speed, athleticism and 3-point shooting.

Ever since Mark Walter bought a majority share of the franchise several months ago, several new people have been brought into its front office. On Tuesday, Pelinka told the media that he will look to hire two assistant general managers to handle specific tasks, per ESPN.

"We will hire two assistant general managers," Pelinka said. "One of those general managers would be over player draft and evaluation processes. That's pro scouting, draft scouting, player development. The other AGM would be more on the strategy side, which is cap, analytics and data.

"It's not that we've had holes in those places. We got a great team of people that works incredibly hard. It's just we want to add more to that, and for both those [assistant] positions we have started a wide search and have begun interviews, but haven't hired out either of those."

The Lakers will have the No. 25 pick in next month's NBA draft, and it could be an important pick, whether they keep the player they choose or re-route him to another team in a trade. They're also set to have tens of millions of dollars in salary cap space, which they will look to use to not only re-sign some of their current key players but also secure an upgrade or two from the outside.