LOS ANGELES — Just 36 hours before acquiring the player who the Lakers hope will be the big man of their present and future, General Manager Rob Pelinka described the type of center the organization was searching for after acknowledging it was the team’s biggest need.
“Versatility, mobility, a vertical lob threat, I think that’s a key to the spacing that Luka [Doncic] likes to play,” Pelinka said during Doncic’s introductory press conference on Tuesday morning. “Competitive – those are some of the core things there. Those players are hard to find. But we’ll accomplish the task that’s before us. We’ll find a way.”
The Lakers indeed found a way and their guy, acquiring 7-foot, 241-pound center Mark Williams from the Charlotte Hornets on Wednesday night in a trade that finally became official on Thursday night after the Lakers’ 120-112 home win against the Golden State Warriors.
“Once Luka was on board, we’ve had some really good sort of basketball philosophy discussions just in terms of our roster, the players on it and just how he sees it in the spirit of just really talking about basketball at a high level,” Pelinka said to a group of beat reporters at Crypto.com Arena. “Those have been fun. One of the things we talked about is whether it would be at the deadline or potentially the summer, seeing if we could add a vertical big, a mobile big that fit also within JJ Redick’s coaching style.
“It wasn’t like, ‘Go get this.’ That was not the spirit of the discussions. More like ‘Stylistically, some of the bigs I had in Dallas were really effective to how I play and how I make my reads.’ And I said, ‘Hey, I’ll do my best for the deadline to see if something like that’s available. If not, it’s something we’ll attack this summer.’”
Doncic, who is likely to make his debut on Monday, and the Lakers won’t have to wait until the summer, with Williams fitting the archetype of big men who have thrived alongside the Slovenian star: an athletic and mobile lob threat who can make his presence felt at the rim.
“He fits that perfect archetype,” Pelinka said. “He’s got great hands, catches the ball above the rim, can finish, gives us a defensive paint presence. There’s a lot of teams in the West that have formidable size that are around the standings with us, Memphis and Houston and OKC. And we just felt like we needed to address that, and we felt like we got the perfect guy.”
Williams, who was drafted with the No. 15 pick out of Duke in 2022, is averaging 16 points (59.7% shooting), 9.8 rebounds, 2.5 assists and 1.2 blocked shots per game in his third NBA season.
He’s averaged 11.7 points (62.6% shooting), 8.4 rebounds, 1.1 blocked shots and 1.1 assists for his career.
“We feel that Mark is a young, starting center in this NBA and he provides that vertical threat,” Coach JJ Redick said. “We as a staff have a job to do in developing him as a screener, decision-maker in the pocket and on the defensive end. But we’re confident with his character, work ethic, IQ that he’s going to be a really good player for us.”
While acknowledging the team’s need for another big man on Tuesday, Pelinka also said that the market for bigs was “dry.”
His comments opened the door for a conversation he wasn’t anticipating.
“You guys gave me help with the press conference by asking about the bigs – that was like a billboard when I said we needed a big,” Pelinka said. “Of course I got several calls and [one] was an incoming call from [Hornets president of basketball operations] Jeff [Peterson]. Great guy. Straightforward. Easy to negotiate with a person of integrity and he just said, ‘hey, this isn’t a player that we’re putting on the market, but just wanted to have a discussion and to see if there’s a fit because you have some stuff on your cap and players in your stable of players that we really like.’ And we just opened up an honest dialogue that went from there.”
Pelinka added: “He lined up so well just in terms of his age and career trajectory with Luka and other parts of our roster. When the opportunity came our way, we were aggressive and brought him to our team. We’re super excited to add Mark Williams.”
The Lakers sent the Hornets rookie wing Dalton Knecht, veteran wing Cam Reddish, their 2031 unprotected first-round draft pick and a 2030 first-round pick swap.
The ’31 pick was their last tradeable first-round pick. They sent Dallas their 2029 pick, along with 10-time All-Star Anthony Davis and third-year guard Max Christie, in the trade for Doncic.
“We’ve said all along we were willing to use our picks if the right opportunity came,” Pelinka said. “We feel like we have two top-five, top-10 players in the world on our team right now. And just saw this as an opportunity to give those two players all the resources they need to make a playoff run.”
The concerns with Williams begin with this durability.
Williams has only played in 85 NBA games: 43 as a rookie (he also played 11 G League games), 19 the following year and 23 of the Hornets’ 48 games this season.
He dealt with multiple sprained left ankles as a rookie and had surgery to repair a torn ligament in his right thumb during the offseason after his first season.
Williams missed most of last season because of a lower back issue.
He sat out the first 20 games of this season because of a strained tendon in his left foot before playing in 23 of 28 games.
But the Lakers are making a bet that Williams will continue to develop and put his early-career injury woes behind him.
“We fully vetted his health stuff, led by Dr. Khris Jones at UCLA Health and Dr. Leroy Simms on our team and he’s had no surgeries,” Pelinka said. “So these are just parts of, he’s still growing into his body. We vetted the injuries he’s had and we’re not concerned about those.”
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