When the Los Angeles Lakers originally signed Luol Deng two summers ago, the plan was for him to be a veteran leader for an extremely young team. That idea quickly changed however, once the previous Lakers regime was removed.
Once Magic Johnson and Rob Pelinka took over as president of basketball operations and general manager, respectively, it was decided that the Lakers would go with the youth. Deng sat out the last 22 games of last season and, after starting the first game of this season, hasn’t seen the floor again.
That’s held true even when the Lakers lacked depth for their game against the Miami Heat.