This might sound kinda like I’m wearing a tinfoil hat here, but it seems to me that a big reason that Magic Johnson stepped down as GM of the Lakers is Ivica “The Big Croatato” Zubac, or, more specifically, his trade that sent Zubac away for Mike Muscala.
Think about it. That trade was a joke as soon as it happened. Magic, who was already feeling some pressure because of his bad-in-hindsight free agent acquisitions over the summer, immediately became the laughing stock of the entire league. Jerry West and co. literally laughed about the trade at dinner. Zubac was and is so, so much better than Muscala that the one-for-one swap of one for the other is the worst straight-up one-for-one trade that I can remember.
After that trade, which was horrendous when it was made and only got more horrendous when Zubac thrived on the Clippers (with Muscala subsequently languishing on the Lakers), there was no way that anybody in the Lakers had any confidence in Magic to make the right decision on any trades every again. Not only that, but teams would constantly be trying to take advantage of him by proposing lopsided trades like that one fantasy-sports buddy of yours who thinks that LeBron for Avery Bradley and Joakim Noah is a good trade.
With my impeccable reasoning above, I don’t even think that this sounds like a conspiracy theory. It’s just a case of an unbelievably bad trade causing a GM to step down before he can face the indignity of getting fired and dragged out the door by security. Lakers fans should be writing thank you letters to Ivica Zubac because his studly play on the other Los Angeles team might have inadvertently gotten the Lakers back on track.