The whole saga is a reminder of why I, an NBA fan since the mid-80s, finds this league hard to enjoy.
You can do everything right as a franchise and still come up short. The Lakers have been one of the worst-run teams in the league for years, they've been awful at managing the cap, have a huge amount of dead money on their cap. So what? Three of the right guys decide they like the idea of living in Southern California, and voila! All that is forgotten. Doesn't matter.
I thought the league was kind of moving past this, but I guess not. Remember when Lamarcus Aldridge had a free agent meeting with the Lakers and they pitched him on marketing and endorsements and stuff, and hardly anything about basketball? He chose the Spurs instead, the best-run organization in the NBA. Basically the most glamorous places -- LA and NY -- have struck out in free agency in recent years, and most people interpreted it as "guys are prioritizing winning and well-run franchises". Well, maybe we got ahead of ourselves.
What we've got here is a cycle where the teams show no loyalty to the players, and the players show no loyalty to the teams. If you were Kyrie Irving and you'd just seen Isaiah Thomas summarily dumped by the team he carried to the ECF on the weight of a bum hip, wouldn't you be a little cautious?
The way out of this mess is to shift your priorities to draft picks and guys on rookie deals. The only way you can guarantee that an elite player will stay with your club in the long-run is to sign him as a rookie and max him out when he becomes a restricted free agency 5 years later. Something to think about before we trade away Jaylen or, God forbid, Tatum.