To avoid Ned Colletti’s fate, Rob Pelinka has to

If only. If Rob Pelinka might use the Dodgers’ blueprint to renovate, Lakers followers wouldn’t even be sweating this summer season.

But, you already know. Baseballs and basketballs, apples and oranges.

The windup and gross sales pitch are the same, though: Deliver a sustainable, high-rising, championship construct. On time and … about that funds. One crew has none. The other’s is tight.

In baseball, they put on caps. In the NBA, they’re compelled to keep under them.

In baseball, they will swing freely (for now). In basketball, they’re hamstrung by aprons.

Ned Colletti had it simpler, and he lasted only two comparatively profitable seasons in his position as Dodgers common supervisor after Mark Walter’s Guggenheim Baseball Management group purchased the ballclub in 2012.

Pelinka has it harder as the Lakers’ common supervisor and president of basketball operations. But like Colletti before him, with Walter having bought the bulk stake in the Lakers, Pelinka goes to have to crash the hourglass and construct a winner with haste. Er, the winner.

If the Lakers lay something but an 18th brick on their championship basis in the next couple seasons, Pelinka’s story in all probability goes to go a lot like Colletti’s.

When free company opens Tuesday, Pelinka is just going to have to show us how artistic he may be, how intelligent and crafty.

He already hit a grand slam with the Luka Doncic commerce in 2025. In one of the NBA’s all-time heists, Pelinka introduced the then-25-year-old Slovenian celebrity to L.A. from the Dallas Mavericks in exchange for basically an growing older and injury-prone Anthony Davis and just one first-round draft decide.

Before that, Pelinka hit another home run with Austin Reaves; a four-bagger so deep that Doncic’s undrafted backcourt-mate has now procured the proverbial bag. (Four years, $185 million price of baggage to the Lakers.)

With those pillars cemented, Pelinka’s job is delivering the A-list heart Doncic reportedly wishes.

Doesn’t matter that all the perceivable candidates — from the Utah Jazz’s Walker Kessler to the New York Knicks’ Mitchell Robinson, the Milwaukee Bucks’ Myles Turner, the Detroit Pistons’ Jalen Duren, the Cleveland Cavaliers’ Jarrett Allen, the Mavericks’ Daniel Gafford, even previous good friend A.D. — sit on a spectrum of unlikely to unwise.

Still, the best plan: Make Doncic glad; make a run at Kessler.

He’s a 24-year-old, defensively adept big man who could be a great pickup, just exhausting to get. But whether or not it’s overpaying in restricted free company or figuring out a sign-and-trade deal, pry him away from the Jazz.

After nailing down a heart, Pelinka also wants to actually hit on the margins. Because in the trendy NBA, the marginal is major.

The current contenders have depth borne of seasons spent tanking and loading up in the draft on athletic, inexpensive younger expertise or, in the case of the just lately topped Knicks, having a main man take $113 million less than he was eligible for, as Jalen Brunson successfully did, to have the opportunity to play with his best buds.

In L.A., the Lakers don’t actually have the first option and shouldn’t ever count on the second.

But Pelinka doesn’t have to swing for the fences every time; he doesn’t need to wow us now, he wants to have wowed us later. Take swings like he did trading for Rui Hachimura or netting sharpshooter Luke Kennard.

Former Laker Pau Gasol, proper, speaks with GM Rob Pelinka during a Lakers follow in 2025.

(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

No one bats 1.000, of course, not even Andrew Friedman, the architect of the Dodgers’ three World Series titles since taking over as president of baseball operations in 2014.

But for the Lakers’ potential $51 million of cap space, for all of this summer season’s much-hyped optionality, Pelinka’s aggressive new boss isn’t the kind to forgive errors that are endlessly entrance of thoughts for the Lakers’ devoted.

Pelinka can’t strike out on free agent signees like Gabe Vincent and Kendrick Nunn. Can’t let somebody like Alex Caruso stroll. Can’t whiff on draftees like Dalton Knecht or Jalen Hood-Schifino — and better hope he hasn’t on this yr’s choice, Cameron Carr, who fell to the Lakers at No. 24.

The wrinkle, this offseason: Last yr’s Lakers — 41-year-old LeBron James, Hachimura, Kennard and, if he opts out, Marcus Smart — might be among the most engaging free brokers on the market, and they’re confirmed matches for a crew that reached the second spherical of the playoffs.

But merely re-signing those guys received’t improve the Lakers’ odds of getting past the Oklahoma City Thunder or San Antonio Spurs in the playoffs.

And merely outspending those groups isn’t an option, either. So Pelinka goes to have to go cut price searching, he’s acquired to discover some hidden gems, pull some methods out of his sleeve. Surprise us, like great common managers are supposed to do.

This is Pelinka’s alternative to show us his blueprint for bringing another title to Los Angeles, to construct a case for himself.