Lakers GM Rob Pelinka is "one of the most important people in this post-Kobe Bryant Lakers era" and has spent recent months "pursuing other titans of industry as a way of creating a more inspired culture" around the team, according to Sam Amick of USA TODAY. Pelinka in October took Lakers players on a "visit to Elon Musk’s SpaceX lab." Musk "showed them his rockets and his groundbreaking technology, then led a discussion about universal truths of success." Then, former Dreamworks CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg "met with the Lakers in November." Rapper Kendrick Lamar "might be up next." The Lakers called them “Genius Talks.” Pelinka said he and Lakers President of Basketball Operations Magic Johnson "wanted to identify geniuses in their space.” Pelinka: “Our core belief is that more developed men make better basketball players. ... So geniuses in life, right, can inspire us on how to be better." Pelinka said he tries to organize something "once a month." Pelinka: "It shows the way we're really trying to do things differently, and it gets back to what I said at the beginning: Support and service. How can we bring things to the guys to make them better human beings and better Lakers basketball players?" Pelinka added, “Players know if you come here -- like happened for Magic, like happened for Kobe -- and you succeed as a Laker, the doors that being a star in this city opens around the globe just can't be matched. I think it's an example of that” (USA TODAY, 12/19).
