Saviors come and go in Lakerdom, although recently the traffic has been largely out-bound.

Happily for the team, there’s not really such a thing. In sports, savior is a cliche for someone the fan base hopes can do the impossible … even if management and the team come to embrace the same illusion, or delusion.

Beloved as Jerry West, the Warriors consultant … I know, it always sounds funny … remains here, he wouldn’t be a savior. On the other hand, whatever he would be, if I was the Lakers, I’d want one of them.

A year ago it was easy to see the the Lakers would want Luke Walton back when he was a Warriors assistant who went 39-4 filling in for Coach Steve Kerr, even if they spent months after that putting out the word that Byron Scott was safe.

West is the same way, or should be, but the Lakers have blown this slam dunk before.

Phil Jackson had been in line to be the next “Lakers Savior,” tenuous as the label would have been. All it would have taken was a disappointing Knicks finish – the team slipped below .500 last week – and a sign that owner Jim Dolan wasn’t happy paying his “Knicks Savior” $12 million annually to continue missing the playoffs.

That would have left it to Phil if he wanted to come here where Jeanie had long wanted to hire him, or stay where he wasn’t wanted for the last two seasons on his Knicks contract.

Then Jeanie and Phil broke up and there went the Lakers Sweethearts narrative.

Not that Lakers fans took it hard, having noticed Phil’s limitations in the front office.

West, as high-strung as Jackson was relaxed, couldn’t match Phil as a coach but was a natural as a GM because he talked to everyone, giving him a wide array of opinions over and above his own.

Jackson is shy, most comfortable with players and coaches he worked with in Chicago and with the Lakers. He doesn’t like to scout (he had to rely on his assistant, Clarence Gaines Jr., to make their sharpest decision, drafting Kristaps Porzingis, whom Phil had seen once) and doesn’t spend his days on the phone with his fellow GMs.

In the big question for the Lakers, what next?

 Management still looks to be approaching a crossroads.

Jim might still have a title next season. What he’s not likely to have is a role.

Jeanie’s insistence on taking his casual “three- or four-year” time frame to mean he’ll leave if the team doesn’t advance in the playoffs this season – with little chance of making the playoffs – suggests she’s ready to limit Jim’s power.

If there’s a longstanding rivalry between the siblings, Lakers fans would welcome the move, making it that much more probable.

 Not that moving Jim aside will accomplish anything, if that’s all the Lakers do.

Like saviors, scapegoats embody the hope that one man can change everything, either by coming or going. Actually, Jim has done little other than side with GM Mitch Kupchak so that insiders say they’re “joined at the hip.”

 It remains to be seen what being allied with Jim means for Kupchak.

Kupchak proved himself even by the Lakers’ lofty standards, rebuilding the post-Shaq team that Kobe tried to bail on into the one that won titles in 2009 and 2010.

If player development happens at an excruciatingly slow pace, the emergence of Julius Randle and D’Angelo Russell and deep picks like Larry Nance show how well Kupchak has drafted.

On the other hand, there are raised eyebrows about the costly signings of Timofey Mozgov and Luol Deng. If Timo is a 7-footer whom they needed, Deng is a small forward and to date a struggling one, making $72 million over four years look like a lot.

 Forget Jim’s power, which is overrated. The problem is how protective the organization has been, which needs to end.

As much as Jerry Buss revered West, hiring him to consult would have been thorny, knowing how uncomfortable it would have made Jim.

Jeanie has done it her father’s way to this point but looks open to a change.

It didn’t seem coincidental when she told Southern California News Group’s Bill Oram, “Jerry West was the single biggest influence on me from when my dad bought the team … a teacher and a mentor and somebody who is Laker standards.”

 The fit could hardly be better with West exercising outsized influence with a minimal title in what still prides itself in being a family organization.

With his unmatched cachet, West would shake things up, bringing a note of daring without littering the stage with bodies as in a Shakespeare play.

As I’ve noted before, West raised the Lakers’ key people. Kupchak was his No. 2 man. Personnel director Ryan West is his son.

 Nobody knows how West would respond – probably including Jerry – but he looks like he would like to be asked back.

I asked West about it recently. He said, “It’s awkward to talk about,” so that’s as far as we got on the record.

But as opposed to being turned off at the prospect, he brightened at it.

Given how valuable he would be in even so limited a role, the Lakers have nothing to lose and everything to gain by asking.

Letting him get away was not the Laker Way. Letting him stay away is worse.