Embarking on what they hope will be a long playoff journey, the Los Angeles Lakers aren’t rocking the roster boat.
Head coach JJ Redick and the team’s front office did not convert Christian Koloko and Trey Jemison III’s two-way contracts to full-fledged NBA contracts, meaning that neither player will suit up for the Lakers during the playoffs. However, both will continue to travel and practice with the team.
Why Trey Jemison and Christian Koloko aren’t on the playoff roster
The decision to keep Jemison, who played 22 games for the Lakers, and Koloko, who played 37, off the playoff roster isn’t an indictment of their ability. Complex rules surrounding NBA rosters and player transactions dictate much of a team’s big-picture and day-to-day decision-making, and this is a prime example.
Simply put, each team is allowed a maximum of 15 players on the roster, plus two more two-way players who can play up to 50 games with the NBA team in the regular season (and more with the G League team). Two-way players aren’t allowed to play in the playoffs, so the Lakers would have had to convert one or both of Jemison and Koloko’s contracts to a standard NBA contract to make them eligible for the playoffs.
The Lakers would have had to cut a different player (or players) to stay under the 15-man roster limit. Los Angeles opted not to do so, a team source told ESPN’s Dave McMenamin, because they liked the chemistry of the entire squad:
The team would have had to make the change at the end of the regular season, but they decided instead not to disrupt any of their chemistry, to which JJ Redick is particularly attuned.
Could Jemison and Koloko have helped on the court?
Jemison and Koloko are centers, pointing to the Lakers’ lack of big-man depth. Jaxson Hayes and Alex Len are the only true centers on the Lakers’ playoff roster. Len has only played 10 games as a Laker, and Hayes missed 26 games this season with injuries, so having two big men as two-way players helped the Lakers down the stretch.
But Redick has shown confidence in small-ball lineups with LeBron James and Jarred Vanderbilt at center. The Lakers are +19.4 points per possession in more than 200 possessions with the quintet of Luka Doncic, Austin Reaves, Dorian Finney-Smith, Rui Hachimura, and LeBron James on the floor, per Cleaning the Glass. Hayes is playing well, and good options for undersized lineups mean that replacements for Jemison’s 10.3 minutes per game and Koloko’s 9.2 won’t be hard to find.
However, chemistry is often hard to find, and the Lakers think they’ve seen it in their current group. With a first-round series against the Minnesota Timberwolves rapidly approaching, the Lakers are keeping their roster as is and hope that Jemison and Koloko will continue to help, even if they can’t do so on the court.
