Rob Pelinka aiming to retain Lakers’ ‘core group’

The Los Angeles Lakers are facing an offseason full of questions, but general manager Rob Pelinka hinted that major changes might not be coming.

On Friday, Pelinka said he still thinks the roster is championship-caliber when healthy, and that he wants to keep the “core group” in place.

“I’m convinced that, again, without some of the unforeseen circumstances this year, the challenges that we had to face, that we’d be a championship-caliber team,” Pelinka said, via Dave McMenamin of ESPN. “So the goal is to try to keep that core group together.”

What Pelinka would consider his core is open to interpretation. It certainly includes LeBron James and Anthony Davis, but beyond that, it’s not clear. There’s also not much guaranteed to be coming back beyond that, as outside of James and Davis, only Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, Kyle Kuzma and Marc Gasol have guaranteed deals for 2021-22. The rest of the supporting cast could look entirely different.

Pelinka has some key decisions ahead. One of them involves guard Dennis Schroder, who is an unrestricted free agent one Laker icon clearly doesn’t want back.