The Los Angeles Lakers have been abysmal this season. Viewed as championship contenders before the season, the Lakers are currently 11th with a 31-47 record. While the Lakers can still make the play-in tournament with a miracle, it would just be a consolation prize at this point. The entire season is lost and head coach Frank Vogel will pay the price. The latest report said that Vogel is likely to be fired come the end of the season.

However, that is likely not going to be enough. The firings should not stop with Vogel. Here are two reasons why the Lakers must clean house and also fire general manager Rob Pelinka.

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Lakers must clean house

Just firing Vogel is papering over the cracks

In all honesty, to say that this Lakers season is the fault of coach Frank Vogel would be dishonest. Vogel is an experienced coach who did bring a championship to Los Angeles in his first full season with the team in 2020. Of course, some things could have been done better on his side, like finding a way to better utilize Russell Westbrook along with certain rotation choices, but he is mainly not at fault for how the season has gone.

Also, this is not a reason not to fire him. The Lakers need a fresh start with a different coach, so firing Vogel is the right decision at the end of the day. However, the move seems like it will pin all the underlying issues on the exiting coach when the reality is fairly different than that.

The issue with the Lakers just firing Vogel and not continuing with Pelinka as well is that it will just paper over the massive cracks in the organization. There is a clear disconnect between the coaching staff and management. When Vogel was hired, the assumption was that the Lakers were getting him because he is a good, stable, and defensive-minded coach. It proved correct when the Lakers won the title in 2020 behind the third-best defense. However, an underlying reason why the Lakers hired him could have been that he does not meddle too much in personnel issues, even though he should, due to the fact that he is the coach of the team.

The Lakers have myriad different people making decisions in terms of their roster structure. While it should only be the GM, Rob Pelinka, making the final call together with a few people around him, many have an influence on who gets brought into the team. LeBron James and his input cannot be forgotten, just like the input of Jeanie Buss, the owner of the franchise, among others. If they brought in a coach who likes to be included in the decisions surrounding the composition of the roster, it could have been too many people whose input they need to consider. Firing coach Vogel will not solve these underlying issues, only wholesale changes would, and they should start with the firing of GM Rob Pelinka.

Rob Pelinka has done a poor job as GM

Pelinka helped orchestrate the Anthony Davis trade, which helped bring about a championship to Los Angeles. There were other key moves made to build that title-winning roster.

However, things have been going downhill since that win in the bubble. Namely, the summer of 2021 was a series of disasters for Pelinka and the organization. The Russell Westbrook trade was the biggest one. There were rumors of pursuits of players like Buddy Hield and DeMar DeRozan, but ultimately the decision was made to trade several key role players for Westbrook, with LeBron and AD pushing for it.

The decision to let Alex Caruso walk while paying Talen Horton-Tucker has also been disastrous, with THT failing to make a leap this season. While ownership could be blamed as well for losing Caruso, Pelinka must also be held accountable. Furthermore, so much of the rest of the roster is filled with flawed role players and older veterans who have not been able to make up for the injuries on the roster.

No one could have predicted all the injuries and everything that has happened with this Lakers season, but Rob Pelinka did more to derail the Lakers than to help them. Pulling off that move for Westbrook was doomed from the start, as putting a non-shooting, ball-dominant point guard next to LeBron James was always an awkward fit. At the end of the day, it seems like Vogel will pay the price, but the Lakers cannot stop there.

It seems unlikely that Jeanie Buss will fire Pelinka because of his deep ties to the organization, but she really should pull the trigger based on how things have played out. A few more years of Pelinka as GM might spell even more misfortune for the Los Angeles Lakers going forward.