The Los Angeles Lakers are in a state of upheaval, with tons of drama surrounding general manager Rob Pelinka, who was recently publicly accused of betraying franchise icon and former team president Magic Johnson.

Now, Pelinka's been accused of something else -- fabricating a story about Kobe Bryant and the late Heath Ledger.

The 49-year-old GM is well known for representing Bryant through his own sports agency prior to taking up his current front-office role with the Lakers in 2017. But a recently circulated video of one of the team's March 2018 "Genius Talks" featuring Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson depicts Pelinka possibly misrepresenting Bryant. The story Pelinka tells revolves around Bryant getting dinner with Ledger, the Academy Award-winning star of "The Dark Knight."

"There was one time when Kobe, who I worked with for 18 years, was going back to play in Madison Square Garden, and he had just seen 'The Dark Knight,'" Pelinka told the Lakers alongside Johnson. "Obviously, you guys saw that movie, and he's like, 'Hey, hook me up with dinner with Heath Ledger, because he got so locked into that role. I want to know how he mentally went there.' So, he had dinner with Heath, and he talked about how he locks in for a role."

The only problem, as many fans skeptical of Pelinka have noted via social media? Ledger died in January of 2008 -- sixth months before "The Dark Knight" was released.

ESPN reported Tuesday that Pelinka's "penchant for 'storytelling' ... is viewed as disingenuous" within the Lakers' staff -- and that his Heath Ledger anecdote may have been an example. "No such arrangement was made" between Bryant and Ledger, the report said, "and no dinner ever took place."

As ComicBook.com recently noted, Bryant would have likely had only 42 days to see a full version of "The Dark Knight" (which hit theaters in July 2008) before Ledger's death. And that's if he was somehow privy to a special screening.

With a six-month time gap between Ledger's death and the premiere of the movie, some are assuming that what Bryant saw was an early screener. When Ledger died on January 22, 2008, The Dark Knight was in the process of being edited, but that might not add up, either. The Lakers game against the Knicks that Pelinka references in his story took place a month earlier on December 23, 2007, but the movie didn't fully complete filming until around mid-November with scenes in Hong Kong.

So was Pelinka just flat-out making this up, as some have suggested? There's one other theory, and it centers on the possibility of Kobe genuinely seeking Ledger's insight after seeing just the first six or seven minutes of "The Dark Knight" -- a prologue that director Christopher Nolan attached to the IMAX release of "I Am Legend" in December 2007. Had Pelinka actually been referring to this, Bryant presumably would've then had a few weeks to see Ledger in action and request a meeting.