odyssey

They mentioned “The Odyssey,” they talked about “Lord of the Rings,” they referenced “The Hobbit,” they cited the hero’s journey, they predicted a season filled with mythological tales of triumph.

What they didn’t promise was that their Lakers’ team would contend for a championship.

What they couldn’t mention was what will happen to them if they don’t.

The bard Rob Pelinka? Off with your head!

The soothsayer JJ Redick? Drawn and quartered!

In their annual pre-training camp news conference at their practice facility Thursday, Pelinka and Redick talked about fictional characters perhaps because the reality is too grim for words.

Their jobs are on the line with a rebuilding team that might not be good enough to save them, and no amount of cute Gandalf references can change that.

With new ownership, the Lakers’ braintrust no longer has the protection of the benevolent Buss family or the baseball-centric Mark Walter.

Here’s guessing Bob Iger and Joshua Kushner will want any excuse to put their own people in charge of their $12.5-billion investment. And if this clearly rebuilding Lakers team doesn’t quickly measure up to the brand that Iger and Kushner purchased, they’ll have that excuse.

In his nine full seasons as the Lakers’ basketball boss, Pelinka constructed the 2020 bubble championship team, but destroyed it soon thereafter and hasn’t won since.

In his two seasons as Lakers coach, Redick became the first Lakers coach to win 50-plus games in consecutive seasons since Phil Jackson. But Redick was always LeBron James’ choice, and now that James is gone — thank goodness! — Redick will have to prove himself all over again to the new guys.

He’s already off to an awkward start considering his answer to a question about who would join Luka Doncic, Austin Reaves and Walker Kessler in the starting lineup. He referenced the lame internet criticism that the Lakers couldn’t win because they were now led by too many white guys.

“I’m pretty confident in three of the spots,” he said. “The other two spots will not be two white guys.”

Um, OK.

Redick acknowledged that all those new potential starters — Quentin Grimes, Collin Sexton, Kevon Looney, Matisse Thybulle and others — can band together to turn this season into a mythological masterpiece.

“Part of the Hero’s journey is allies and gods,” he said, referring to stories about ordinary folk who are transformed by triumphant adventures. “And so I think if you look at “Lord of the Rings,” right? All the guys from “The Hobbit,” those guys had to be connected. They had to embrace the fact that they were allies, right? … You’re not gonna get through the journey without that. Or the journey’s gonna be even more tumultuous than it is because the reality is there will be ordeals and trials along the way.”

At this point Pelinka jumped in, saying, “So I’m a big Tolkien guy. Are you Samwise or Frodo?”

Answered Redick, “Uh, I’m simultaneously Samwise and Gandalf.”

Replied Pelinka: “Gandalf. That’s even better.”

Rob Pelinka (left), the Lakers general manager/president of basketball operations, speaks to the media with coach JJ Redick on Thursday at the team’s training facility in El Segundo.

(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

In San Antonio they’re talking about Wemby, in Oklahoma City they’re talking about SGA, and in Los Angeles they’re talking about … Frodo?

Tumultuous indeed. Welcome to life after LeBron, with Pelinka essentially starting the news conference by answering the biggest question of the summer — why did the James and Laker marriage fail?

Except he didn’t answer it.

“I’m so thankful for the partnership that we had that continued up until this summer when a decision was made for him to play for another team,” he said.

A decision was made by whom? James said it was him. It says here it was the Lakers, who needed to move him out if they were going to move ahead.

Pelinka didn’t elaborate, instead focusing on a popular reference that he sort of botched.

“We’ve talked about every season is a little bit like ‘The Odyssey,’ if anyone has seen the movie,” he said before someone corrected him. “Oh, it was actually a poem. Fair enough.”

The poem wasn’t this complicated.

“You launch a season, and there’s things that happen throughout that you can’t predict, but you have to stay together as a group and stay strong,” Pelinka said. “That’s a great theme for us.”

Pelinka will be going through his own Odyssey this season, as evidenced by his defense of his accomplishments.

“If you look at the teams that we’re wanting to go shoulder-to-shoulder with, the Thunder and the Spurs maybe in the West. … They had to lose many seasons to get high picks and we just don’t have the luxury of that here,” he said. “Again, the expectations are every year (to) win, get in the playoffs, make a run, and so we feel like we’ve been able to do that. As I’ve started, since I’ve been here in the leadership position, we’ve been a playoff team and we have to continue to do that.”

Redick was also playing defense, saying, “No one is a championship-level team on September 29. There’s not a team in the league that is a championship-level team. That is an ongoing process throughout the year. Rob talks about his job in that. Well, I have a job in that. Our players have a job in that. I’m confident we’re gonna develop as a team into a championship-level team this year. “

This season will live forever in Lakers folklore if they do.

There could be a medieval bloodbath if they don’t.