The Suns are no longer up against the mom-and-pop Lakers

The Lakers have changed. They are cunning and coherent. They are no longer a mom-and-pop shop awkwardly in charge of an iconic brand. Welcome to our latest nightmare.

The Lakers — the archrival and antichrist to every true Suns fan — dominated Day 2 of free agency, poaching an excellent restricted 7-foot-2 free agent (Walker Kessler) at a price they knew the Utah Jazz would not match. That was followed by a flurry of shrewd signings: Quentin Grimes, Sandro Mamukelashvili and Collin Sexton.

Critics claim the revamped roster in Los Angeles is thin on wings and defense and ultimately doomed to fail. They poured all their draft capital into a team that has no chance of usurping the Spurs or Thunder. They are missing the point.

The Lakers are now operated by the same group that runs the Dodgers, a team with extreme ambition and ammunition. A team run by billionaire Mark Walter, who has won two consecutive World Series championships, exploiting loopholes (deferred contracts), spending relentlessly on talent and investing heavily into analytics, scouting and player development. Walter’s group goes where most clubs are unwilling to venture.

This is a problem. His methods are so effective they might shut down an entire sport to stop him.

As I’ve mentioned numerous times in this space, the Lakers are the luckiest franchise in professional sports. Their market size and mystique – namely, their proximity to the ocean and to the glitz of Hollywood – has gifted the Lakers a stunning abundance of stars yearning to live the big life in Southern California. But following the death of the great Dr. Jerry Buss, the Lakers have been adrift at the top.

The Walter group just proved as much, starting with their extrication of LeBron James. Without saying a word, the new Lakers made it implicitly clear to James that they were moving on without him. They let James have the final say. They let him tell the media he was moving on. They won the war by letting James win the battle.

The transition from LeBron to Luka was much cleaner than Shaq-Kobe, and these recent events have obviously been planned for months. The Buss family could’ve never pulled this off.

The Suns will have their hands full in 2026-27.

They have an improved roster with a real power forward, but they are well down the Western Conference ladder, which has now become an arms race for big men to counter San Antonio’s Victor Wembanyama. And if the Lakers are the new Dodgers, we really have issues in Arizona.

Reach Bickley at dbickley@arizonasports.com. Listen to Bickley & Marotta weekdays from 6 a.m. – 10 a.m. on Arizona Sports 98.7.

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