Current Orlando Magic shooting guard Kentavious Caldwell-Pope was a member of the Los Angeles Lakers for four season, between 2017 and 2021. In between stints with the Detroit Pistons and Denver Nuggets, he played 292 regular season games with 190 starts for the Lakers, joining them after a poor 26-56 2016-17 season in which they finished second-last in the NBA’s Western Conference.
Caldwell-Pope was there for the bad times, and was also there for the good. By the team he left, the Lakers had won the then-record-tying 17th NBA Championship in franchise history, winning the title in the CoVid-affect 2019-20 season by beating the Miami Heat in six games in the 2020 NBA Finals. As the regular starter on that team, he was a key component of the Lakers’ turnaround.
Nevertheless, Caldwell-Pope felt that they could have done more. And he is not alone in that.
Two Former Lakers Podcasting Together
One of Caldwell-Pope’s teammates on that championship team, eight-time NBA All-Star Dwight Howard, now hosts a podcast called Above The Rim. On the latest episode, he and KCP reminisced about their title with the Lakers, how well the players clicked both on and off the court, and rued what they see as a lost opportunity to win more titles. Two more, specifically.
Kentavious Caldwell-Pope: “Everything just clicked for us, inviting to each other’s houses. I spent more time with my team than my family. If we kept that together, we would’ve run off two more. There would be no more GOAT talk, that would’ve put LeBron at six [championships].”
Dwight Howard: “Man, Rob [Pelinka, Lakers General Manager]. Why you do us like that?”
Certainly, the Lakers’ title defence was a tame affair. In 2020-21, the defending champions were knocked out in the first round of the playoffs by the Phoenix Suns, then missed the playoffs altogether in 2021-22 in a poor 33-49 season.
Far from being able to run off two more, as Caldwell-Pope and Howard envisioned, the Lakers were instead back in the lottery. The same place they found themselves when KCP got there.
Too Much Roster Turnover
After the Lakers’ 2020 success, the vast majority of their roster hit free agency at the same time. Caldwell-Pope, Markieff Morris, Kostas Antetokounmpo, Jared Dudley, Anthony Davis and Quinn Cook all re-signed with the team and Montrezl Harrell, Wes Matthews and Marc Gasol all joined via free agency. However, Howard, Avery Bradley, Dion Waiters, J.R, Smith and Rajon Rondo all departed via the same method, while JaVale McGee and Danny Green were traded away in different deals to the Cleveland Cavaliers and Oklahoma City Thunder respectively.
By the time of the 2021 offseason, the list of departures from the title team was far longer. Headlined by not matching the free agency contract given to Alex Caruso by the uncharacteristically visionary Chicago Bulls, the Lakers also traded Caldwell-Pope, Harrell and Kyle Kuzma that summer in the deal for Russell Westbrook.
By the time that the opening night of the 2021-22 season rolled around, only four players remained from the title-winning team of a mere 14 months before; Rondo, Davis, LeBron James and Howard (who had left but come back). In their stead came an ageing roster featuring eleven players who had at least nine years of NBA experience, with additions including Carmelo Anthony, DeAndre Jordan, Trevor Ariza and Wayne Ellington.
James and Davis excepted, the roster was nigh-on unrecognisable from the cohesive title-winning unit described by Caldwell-Pope. They looked like they had not played together before, because they hadn’t.
With their completion of the (admittedly far too good to pass up) trade for Luka Doncic with the Dallas Mavericks back in February, the Lakers have been given another opportunity to contend during the LeBron era, and will be attempting to reload one last time to with their 18th title and level up once again with their great rival, the Boston Celtics. But Caldwell-Pope and Howard now join Caruso as being members of the 2020 title team who wonder what might have been.
