This offseason will be the first time that the Los Angeles Lakers' new ownership, the majority of which is led by Mark Walter, will be able to truly call shots within the team and the first front office hire under this new regime looks to be an impressive one. 

The Lakers finalized a deal to hire Rohan Ramadas as their newest assistant general manager under general manager and president Rob Pelinka and based on Ramadas' resume, it looks like he could take the Lakers to the stratosphere, in more ways than one.

Starting with Ramadas' basketball career, he previously worked for the New Orleans Pelicans from 2024-26 in a variety of roles, first as the senior director of analytics and innovation in the 2024-25 season and after that as the vice president of basketball operation during the 2025-26 season. 

Before he entered basketball though, he was in a very different field. After graduating from the University of Southern California with bachelor's and master's degrees in astronautical engineering, he worked for years with NASA, the United States Space Force and Aerospace Corporation as a rocket guidance engineer. 

"He's a literal rocket scientist," a  source within the Pelicans told ESPN after Ramadas' hiring by the Lakers.

Obviously, basketball and "rocket science" are very different worlds overall, but the common thread they share that Ramadas has been able to work in is their emphasis on mathematics and data analytics. 

With the Pelicans, Ramadas "implemented AI and coded models to aid the front office," per a report from ESPN. 

Now, Ramadas will be putting his numerical expertise to work with the Lakers as a strategic advisor, overseeing player analytics, data and issues related to the salary cap, according to Pelinka. 

Pelinka and the Lakers plan to hire an additional assistant general manager to focus more on player analysis and scouting to better aid the Lakers' scouting process, but Ramadas is certainly an impressive name to add to the staff to kick off the hiring season and instill a new sense of prestige and confidence to the front office. 

Ramadas will take his skills from working with high-flying rockets and ideally translate them into high-flying dunks and with the rapid increase in the importance of analytics across basketball, such an esteemed analytical mind is a huge plus for the Lakers to stay in the curve. 

This will be a big offseason for the Lakers in terms of setting up their roster for success going forward and building a team around Luka Doncic that can contend in the formidable Western Conference for years to come and so far, it looks like the Lakers are making big strides in their personnel.