El Segundo — Earlier this offseason, Magic Johnson and Rob Pelinka were sitting on couches around the coffee table in Jeanie Buss’ office at the Los Angeles Lakers practice facility. The triumvirate in charge of rebuilding the team were batting around ideas as they frequently do, when Buss raised a question for the two men she had tasked with running the Lakers’ basketball operations department: What do they think is the “defining trait” of their current crop of players?
It was an easy answer for Pelinka and Johnson, who were looking for one thing as they overhauled the Lakers’ roster in free agency — competitiveness.