- 37,054
- 12,406
- Joined
- Aug 2, 2008
**LA LAKERS THREAD** Sitting on 17! 2023-2024 offseason begins
- Thread in 'Sports & Training' Thread starter Started by licensed to ball,
- Start date
darthska
Staff member
- 46,288
- 30,459
- Joined
- Apr 30, 2004
The ceiling is the roof!
- 7,522
- 10,428
- Joined
- Sep 19, 2012
Definitely an L tonight, but who’s all available to play in this game?
- 37,054
- 12,406
- Joined
- Aug 2, 2008
I’m playing some microwave minutes to close the 3rd.
MIKE LOWERY
formerly chuck finster
- 7,532
- 4,632
- Joined
- Mar 1, 2007
DLo
Beasley
Bron
Vando
AD
Schroder
Reaves
TB7
Rui
Bamba
Lonnie
Wenyen
Christie
Reed
I can see Lonnie getting spot minutes here and there. Schroder ******* up? Let Reaves run the second unit and add size to the backcourt with Lonnie and TB7 at the 3. Same with TB7. If he's off, put him in.
Just weird not moving him. You're going to lose him anyway. Then you got Max Christie and Davon Reed now with the DEN deal. While they're end of bench guys, they'll actually be back next year and for the 10 minutes or so you got for Lonnie, might as well throw those elsewhere to guys who factor into next year.
- 91,313
- 125,543
- Joined
- Sep 5, 2010
Schroder, Walker, Brown Jr, Rui, AD, Wenyen, Reaves, Swider, Pippen Jr
- 17,562
- 24,579
- Joined
- Feb 8, 2009
darthska
Staff member
- 46,288
- 30,459
- Joined
- Apr 30, 2004
- 37,054
- 12,406
- Joined
- Aug 2, 2008
Unless it was the Thunder. No team is going 4 for Bridges. I don’t believe them.
Would be malpractice by the Nets.
- 91,313
- 125,543
- Joined
- Sep 5, 2010
I might've done that if I were the Grizzlies.
MVP
Supporter
- 82,926
- 85,345
- Joined
- Feb 28, 2008
They did the same thing to D'Lo and he took the high road.
It wasn't professional then either
- 91,313
- 125,543
- Joined
- Sep 5, 2010
Just posting the Lakers section of the article:
Why the Lakers-Timberwolves-Jazz 3-team trade is a win-win-win for everyone
Finally, the Russell Westbrook era with the Los Angeles Lakers is over, and it ends with a deal that could reshape the future of the three organizations involved.
In a three-team deal involving the Utah Jazz and the Minnesota Timberwolves, the Lakers traded Westbrook, Juan Toscano-Anderson, Damian Jones and a 2027 top-four protected first-round pick to the Utah Jazz. In return, the Lakers receive D’Angelo Russell from the Timberwolves, as well as Malik Beasley and Jarred Vanderbilt from the Jazz. The Timberwolves got Jazz guards Mike Conley and Nickeil Alexander-Walker, along with two second-round picks.
All three organizations accomplished some of their goals. The Lakers solved a few key problems simultaneously, adding bigger guards and wings while furthering their roster’s shooting depth. The Timberwolves got a short-term answer at point guard beyond this season, and the Jazz continued to accrue long-term value under new head of basketball operations Danny Ainge.
How much does this trade help the Lakers?
Undeniably, a lot. The team gets the specific skill sets it needs while also maintaining future flexibility. To do all of that for only one first-round pick is a win.
More importantly, it ends the Westbrook era in Los Angeles. Westbrook’s move to the bench has excited many this season, but it’s better to characterize the move as simply making the best of a bad situation rather than one that has actually paid off on the court. For the second straight year, there is a case that Westbrook was one of the most harmful players in the NBA to his team. He turns the ball over 18.1 percent of his possessions, one of the 10-worst marks in the league among the 189 players with at least 1,000 minutes. His 49.6 true shooting percentage is third-worst within that sample, ahead of only Detroit’s Killian Hayes and Memphis’ Dillon Brooks. That’s a lethal combination of carelessness and inefficiency.
The reason Hayes and Brooks play is because they are excellent defenders. Westbrook, on the other hand, is actively harmful there due to his inattentiveness on and off the ball. The Lakers gave up 117.6 points per 100 possessions with him on the court compared to 113.3 with him off it – the difference between the fourth-worst defense and a top-10 one. While defense relies on teamwork, it’s often Westbrook’s errors like getting driven at the point of attack or losing his man away from the ball that lead to opponents’ buckets. Opponents generate 3s on about 40 percent of Lakers’ opponents’ shots when Russ was on the floor, shooting 35.1 percent. When he’s off the floor, they only get 36 percent of their shots from 3, making only 34 percent. That sounds marginal, but it’s the difference between ranking in the top 10 and bottom 10 in 3-point attempt rate.
With all due respect to Westbrook’s career, which includes an MVP and making nine All-NBA teams, losing him is addition by subtraction for the Lakers.
In his place comes Russell, Vanderbilt and Beasley — three players who plug specific skill-based holes while also presenting some issues. Ideally, this Lakers team needs players that are positives on both ends of the court, and none of those three really qualify. Beasley and Russell are terrific offensive players who don’t defend. Vanderbilt is a really good defender and rebounder who isn’t much of a scorer.
Russell’s acquisition is interesting, as it would seem the team chose him over Conley. I generally prefer Conley as a player to Russell, but the Lakers probably made the right call for their roster. Conley, even at this stage of his career, does qualify as the type of two-way player the team needs. But he has a partial guarantee for next season that could limit the Lakers’ flexibility, whereas Russell is on an expiring deal.
Conley is also small, which is an issue the Lakers’ coaching staff has struggled to avoid. The team has played over half of its minutes to this point with at least two players 6-foot-3 or shorter out on the court, played 800 minutes with two players 6-foot-1 or shorter, and even played 237 minutes with three 6-foot-3 or shorter players, according to PBP Stats. It’s exceptionally difficult to defend with that lack of size in today’s spread-out NBA. It’s not an accident the Lakers have allowed 117 points per 100 possessions in minutes with two 6-foot-1 or shorter players and 118.5 in the minutes where they had three of them out there. Russell won’t help defensively, but he will help the Lakers rebalance their lineups with more size, shooting and playmaking.
The shooting part is key. The Lakers have made just 33.8 percent from 3 this season, the fifth-worst mark in the league. They’re also fifth-worst in 3-point attempt rate, so they aren’t even taking enough. For a team centered around LeBron James – a human kickout pass generator – that was an unforgivable sin of team-building. Russell can go hot and cold at times, but he takes a ton of 3s and typically registers between 36 and 39 percent per season. The only Laker taking at least five 3s per game and making at least 36 percent is Lonnie Walker IV. Russell’s percentage and volume is a substantial upgrade.
Plus, Russell should replace Dennis Schröder and Westbrook as the secondary creator next to LeBron, a shared initiator role that has largely suited him during his career. His best season came in 2018-19 with the Brooklyn Nets, when he was named an All-Star while splitting the lead ballhandling responsibilities with Spencer Dinwiddie. Russell recently had his best stretch with the Timberwolves, logging 20.2 points and 5.6 assists over his last 18 games while shooting 48.4 percent from the field and 45.9 percent from 3 on over eight attempts per game. It’s not an accident this run coincided with two other developments: Anthony Edwards gobbling up a larger share of Minnesota’s offense, and Kyle Anderson taking on more on-ball passing and playmaking. When Russell can play with freedom and decisiveness as a scorer first and use his creative passing vision second, he’s valuable. It’s when he has to worry about balancing scoring with passing while serving as the primary creator for everyone that he gets in a bit of trouble.
The Lakers should offer a more natural ecosystem for the best version of Russell. LeBron’s driving and scoring should open up more open shots for Russell, as well as longer closeouts for him to attack. With LeBron’s ability to force defenses to help and rotate, Russell should get a lot of opportunities like this to use his elite footwork and handle to drive into the paint off someone else’s dribble penetration to finish with touch.
The other end of the floor might be a problem. I’m skeptical that Russell will be able to handle what the Lakers need him to do on defense. He struggles getting through screens and dealing with guards on the ball. He tends to fare better when patrolling the backline and communicating coverages from the opposite side of the floor, but that’s a role LeBron typically fills, since it allows his 38-year-old body to actively rest during play. The good news is Russell is clearing an extremely low bar to be better than Westbrook for 28 minutes per night.
Beasley’s utility on this team is simpler: he’s a terrific shooter coming to a team that desperately needs someone to knock down 3s off kickout passes from LeBron (and now Russell). Beasley has hit 38 percent of his seven 3-point attempts per game since the 2018-19 season. Like Russell, he goes through spates of inconsistency, but he is largely reliable over the long haul. Even if he’s missing, defenders will close out on him, opening the court more for LeBron on drives and Anthony Davis with elbow and mid-post touches.
Yet it’s worth noting that lineups in Minnesota featuring both Russell and Beasley really struggled defensively during the 2020-21 and 2021-22 seasons. Per PBP Stats, the Wolves gave up over 116 points per 100 possessions in the more than 1,200 minutes they shared, marks that would have been third-worst in the NBA in 2021-22 and second-worst in 2020-21, respectively. It might be difficult to play those two together. But because the Lakers really need shooting, he’ll help.
Vanderbilt, for the first time in his career, is not a mere throw-in. He solves a couple of issues for the Lakers as a hybrid big/wing that is extremely active, plus he has an exceptionally team-friendly contract that pays him $4.4 million this season and $4.7 million next season.
Since his days at Kentucky, Vanderbilt has been a voracious rebounder. He currently ranks in the top 20 in the league in both offensive and defensive rebounding rate, the only non-center to place that high in both. The Lakers aren’t a great rebounding team, ranking 24th on offense and 17th on defense. (One could argue those issues got even worse with Westbrook departing, but the Lakers were actually a worse defensive rebounding team as a whole in the minutes Westbrook was on the court. In fact, that has been true of Westbrook lineups in each of the last three seasons.)
More importantly, Vanderbilt is a defensive chess piece. He’s a high-effort chaos-inducer with size; frankly, it’s exhausting watching how hard he works. The Wolves and Jazz have used him in a variety of creative ways over the past two seasons. If the Wolves needed someone to shut down a hot scoring guard, they had Vanderbilt pick him up for 70 feet and make his life hell. If either team needed someone to switch a pick-and-roll, he’d do that. If either team wanted him to play up to the level of ball screens before recovering, he’d do that with flying limbs and arms frustrating ballhandlers. Sometimes, Vanderbilt “guards” non-shooting threats so he can roam off them as a help defender. In each role, Vanderbilt consistently finds ways to get his hand to the ball, ranking in the top- 15 leaguewide in loose-ball recoveries per minute and the top 30 in deflections.
That activity level can work against Vanderbilt sometimes. He too often gets too focused on making an action play as opposed to sticking tight to his man. He’s best defending certain types of players – non-shooting threats, bigs who set lots of screens, on-ball scoring threats – and tends to struggle against floor-spacers or movement shooters who can take advantage of his aggression. In this play, for example, he overhelps on a driver despite teammate Lauri Markkanen being in position. This allows his man, Reggie Bullock, to sneak away for a wide open 3.
Still, Vanderbilt’s defensive impact is more positive than negative. He’ll be useful in the playoffs just because he’s switchable, mobile and he thrives doing dirty work.
Plus, the Lakers should be able to space the floor well enough now to get the most out of Vanderbilt’s strange offensive game. Vanderbilt is a low-usage scorer who does most of his damage out of the dunker spot along the baseline and on short-roll passes. He’s comfortable with the ball in his hands, and can occasionally grab-and-go to start the offense. Defenders sag way off him because they know that he can’t shoot, but he’s become adept at punishing them with dribble handoffs for shooters. Utah even included a couple of sets to take advantage of this skill, letting him bring the ball up the right side of the court to rip a quick laser pass to Markkanen coming off screens for an open 3.
Vanderbilt’s head is constantly up looking for kickouts. Here’s a recent short-roll example, where he catches Beasley’s pass on the pick-and-roll before zipping a cross-corner kickout to Ochai Agbaji.
All in all, Russell, Beasley and Vanderbilt are immediate rotation players who substantially upgrade the Lakers. Vanderbilt should replace the defensively deficient Thomas Bryant for 20 to 25 minutes per night, Russell and Beasley provide James and Davis space to attack and Russell can act as a secondary creator upgrade. Defensively, this team should at least have more size, though they’ll need to figure out how to manage the point of attack. I also have some off-ball defensive concerns about all three of the acquisitions if Lakers coach Darvin Ham doesn’t use them properly.
But the biggest problem for the Lakers is just that time isn’t on their side. They’re only two games back of the Play-In tournament. But they’re 3.5 games back of a home Play-In Tournament game, and 4.5 games back of being seeded in the playoffs as a top-six seed. To get to the .500 mark that it looks like it’ll take to make the Play-In Tournament in the West, they’ll need to go 16-11, essentially a 49-win pace. To get to the 45-win mark to put them in play for the top-six, they’ll have to win 20 of their last 27 games, essentially a 60-win pace. My bet is that the Lakers make the Play-In, not the playoffs. But I don’t think anyone will actually want to deal with a motivated LeBron in the playoffs as long as Davis can stay healthy (a big if, as always).
Yet the most important aspect of this deal is the flexibility it provides the Lakers in the summer. Time isn’t on the Lakers’ side this season, but acquiring Russell, Vanderbilt, Beasley and Rui Hachimura over the last couple of weeks gives them offseason options. The team has only added Vanderbilt’s $4.7 million salary for next season – Russell and Hachimura are expiring contracts, and Beasley has a team option that must be decided by June 29. The Lakers now only have $95.9 million on their books for next season, including James, Davis, Vanderbilt, Max Christie and Austin Reaves’ minimal restricted free agency cap hold of $2 million. Against a projected $134 million salary cap, that puts L.A. extremely close to maximum cap space if they renounce every other cap hold. But if they don’t have a big free-agent signing in mind, they can still actually act as an over-the-cap team by retaining Russell’s and Hachimura’s cap holds, exercising Beasley’s option, and using their full midlevel exception to add one more piece. On top of all of this, they still have their 2029 first-round pick and will be able to trade the player they choose with their 2023 first-round pick (the Pelicans own swap rights with them this year).
The addition by Westbrook subtraction, the help of the players involved in the deal and the future flexibility it provides is why this deal was a no-brainer for Los Angeles, even if it doesn’t solve all of its issues.
Finally, the Russell Westbrook era with the Los Angeles Lakers is over, and it ends with a deal that could reshape the future of the three organizations involved.
In a three-team deal involving the Utah Jazz and the Minnesota Timberwolves, the Lakers traded Westbrook, Juan Toscano-Anderson, Damian Jones and a 2027 top-four protected first-round pick to the Utah Jazz. In return, the Lakers receive D’Angelo Russell from the Timberwolves, as well as Malik Beasley and Jarred Vanderbilt from the Jazz. The Timberwolves got Jazz guards Mike Conley and Nickeil Alexander-Walker, along with two second-round picks.
All three organizations accomplished some of their goals. The Lakers solved a few key problems simultaneously, adding bigger guards and wings while furthering their roster’s shooting depth. The Timberwolves got a short-term answer at point guard beyond this season, and the Jazz continued to accrue long-term value under new head of basketball operations Danny Ainge.
How much does this trade help the Lakers?
Undeniably, a lot. The team gets the specific skill sets it needs while also maintaining future flexibility. To do all of that for only one first-round pick is a win.
More importantly, it ends the Westbrook era in Los Angeles. Westbrook’s move to the bench has excited many this season, but it’s better to characterize the move as simply making the best of a bad situation rather than one that has actually paid off on the court. For the second straight year, there is a case that Westbrook was one of the most harmful players in the NBA to his team. He turns the ball over 18.1 percent of his possessions, one of the 10-worst marks in the league among the 189 players with at least 1,000 minutes. His 49.6 true shooting percentage is third-worst within that sample, ahead of only Detroit’s Killian Hayes and Memphis’ Dillon Brooks. That’s a lethal combination of carelessness and inefficiency.
The reason Hayes and Brooks play is because they are excellent defenders. Westbrook, on the other hand, is actively harmful there due to his inattentiveness on and off the ball. The Lakers gave up 117.6 points per 100 possessions with him on the court compared to 113.3 with him off it – the difference between the fourth-worst defense and a top-10 one. While defense relies on teamwork, it’s often Westbrook’s errors like getting driven at the point of attack or losing his man away from the ball that lead to opponents’ buckets. Opponents generate 3s on about 40 percent of Lakers’ opponents’ shots when Russ was on the floor, shooting 35.1 percent. When he’s off the floor, they only get 36 percent of their shots from 3, making only 34 percent. That sounds marginal, but it’s the difference between ranking in the top 10 and bottom 10 in 3-point attempt rate.
With all due respect to Westbrook’s career, which includes an MVP and making nine All-NBA teams, losing him is addition by subtraction for the Lakers.
In his place comes Russell, Vanderbilt and Beasley — three players who plug specific skill-based holes while also presenting some issues. Ideally, this Lakers team needs players that are positives on both ends of the court, and none of those three really qualify. Beasley and Russell are terrific offensive players who don’t defend. Vanderbilt is a really good defender and rebounder who isn’t much of a scorer.
Russell’s acquisition is interesting, as it would seem the team chose him over Conley. I generally prefer Conley as a player to Russell, but the Lakers probably made the right call for their roster. Conley, even at this stage of his career, does qualify as the type of two-way player the team needs. But he has a partial guarantee for next season that could limit the Lakers’ flexibility, whereas Russell is on an expiring deal.
Conley is also small, which is an issue the Lakers’ coaching staff has struggled to avoid. The team has played over half of its minutes to this point with at least two players 6-foot-3 or shorter out on the court, played 800 minutes with two players 6-foot-1 or shorter, and even played 237 minutes with three 6-foot-3 or shorter players, according to PBP Stats. It’s exceptionally difficult to defend with that lack of size in today’s spread-out NBA. It’s not an accident the Lakers have allowed 117 points per 100 possessions in minutes with two 6-foot-1 or shorter players and 118.5 in the minutes where they had three of them out there. Russell won’t help defensively, but he will help the Lakers rebalance their lineups with more size, shooting and playmaking.
The shooting part is key. The Lakers have made just 33.8 percent from 3 this season, the fifth-worst mark in the league. They’re also fifth-worst in 3-point attempt rate, so they aren’t even taking enough. For a team centered around LeBron James – a human kickout pass generator – that was an unforgivable sin of team-building. Russell can go hot and cold at times, but he takes a ton of 3s and typically registers between 36 and 39 percent per season. The only Laker taking at least five 3s per game and making at least 36 percent is Lonnie Walker IV. Russell’s percentage and volume is a substantial upgrade.
Plus, Russell should replace Dennis Schröder and Westbrook as the secondary creator next to LeBron, a shared initiator role that has largely suited him during his career. His best season came in 2018-19 with the Brooklyn Nets, when he was named an All-Star while splitting the lead ballhandling responsibilities with Spencer Dinwiddie. Russell recently had his best stretch with the Timberwolves, logging 20.2 points and 5.6 assists over his last 18 games while shooting 48.4 percent from the field and 45.9 percent from 3 on over eight attempts per game. It’s not an accident this run coincided with two other developments: Anthony Edwards gobbling up a larger share of Minnesota’s offense, and Kyle Anderson taking on more on-ball passing and playmaking. When Russell can play with freedom and decisiveness as a scorer first and use his creative passing vision second, he’s valuable. It’s when he has to worry about balancing scoring with passing while serving as the primary creator for everyone that he gets in a bit of trouble.
The Lakers should offer a more natural ecosystem for the best version of Russell. LeBron’s driving and scoring should open up more open shots for Russell, as well as longer closeouts for him to attack. With LeBron’s ability to force defenses to help and rotate, Russell should get a lot of opportunities like this to use his elite footwork and handle to drive into the paint off someone else’s dribble penetration to finish with touch.
The other end of the floor might be a problem. I’m skeptical that Russell will be able to handle what the Lakers need him to do on defense. He struggles getting through screens and dealing with guards on the ball. He tends to fare better when patrolling the backline and communicating coverages from the opposite side of the floor, but that’s a role LeBron typically fills, since it allows his 38-year-old body to actively rest during play. The good news is Russell is clearing an extremely low bar to be better than Westbrook for 28 minutes per night.
Beasley’s utility on this team is simpler: he’s a terrific shooter coming to a team that desperately needs someone to knock down 3s off kickout passes from LeBron (and now Russell). Beasley has hit 38 percent of his seven 3-point attempts per game since the 2018-19 season. Like Russell, he goes through spates of inconsistency, but he is largely reliable over the long haul. Even if he’s missing, defenders will close out on him, opening the court more for LeBron on drives and Anthony Davis with elbow and mid-post touches.
Yet it’s worth noting that lineups in Minnesota featuring both Russell and Beasley really struggled defensively during the 2020-21 and 2021-22 seasons. Per PBP Stats, the Wolves gave up over 116 points per 100 possessions in the more than 1,200 minutes they shared, marks that would have been third-worst in the NBA in 2021-22 and second-worst in 2020-21, respectively. It might be difficult to play those two together. But because the Lakers really need shooting, he’ll help.
Vanderbilt, for the first time in his career, is not a mere throw-in. He solves a couple of issues for the Lakers as a hybrid big/wing that is extremely active, plus he has an exceptionally team-friendly contract that pays him $4.4 million this season and $4.7 million next season.
Since his days at Kentucky, Vanderbilt has been a voracious rebounder. He currently ranks in the top 20 in the league in both offensive and defensive rebounding rate, the only non-center to place that high in both. The Lakers aren’t a great rebounding team, ranking 24th on offense and 17th on defense. (One could argue those issues got even worse with Westbrook departing, but the Lakers were actually a worse defensive rebounding team as a whole in the minutes Westbrook was on the court. In fact, that has been true of Westbrook lineups in each of the last three seasons.)
More importantly, Vanderbilt is a defensive chess piece. He’s a high-effort chaos-inducer with size; frankly, it’s exhausting watching how hard he works. The Wolves and Jazz have used him in a variety of creative ways over the past two seasons. If the Wolves needed someone to shut down a hot scoring guard, they had Vanderbilt pick him up for 70 feet and make his life hell. If either team needed someone to switch a pick-and-roll, he’d do that. If either team wanted him to play up to the level of ball screens before recovering, he’d do that with flying limbs and arms frustrating ballhandlers. Sometimes, Vanderbilt “guards” non-shooting threats so he can roam off them as a help defender. In each role, Vanderbilt consistently finds ways to get his hand to the ball, ranking in the top- 15 leaguewide in loose-ball recoveries per minute and the top 30 in deflections.
That activity level can work against Vanderbilt sometimes. He too often gets too focused on making an action play as opposed to sticking tight to his man. He’s best defending certain types of players – non-shooting threats, bigs who set lots of screens, on-ball scoring threats – and tends to struggle against floor-spacers or movement shooters who can take advantage of his aggression. In this play, for example, he overhelps on a driver despite teammate Lauri Markkanen being in position. This allows his man, Reggie Bullock, to sneak away for a wide open 3.
Still, Vanderbilt’s defensive impact is more positive than negative. He’ll be useful in the playoffs just because he’s switchable, mobile and he thrives doing dirty work.
Plus, the Lakers should be able to space the floor well enough now to get the most out of Vanderbilt’s strange offensive game. Vanderbilt is a low-usage scorer who does most of his damage out of the dunker spot along the baseline and on short-roll passes. He’s comfortable with the ball in his hands, and can occasionally grab-and-go to start the offense. Defenders sag way off him because they know that he can’t shoot, but he’s become adept at punishing them with dribble handoffs for shooters. Utah even included a couple of sets to take advantage of this skill, letting him bring the ball up the right side of the court to rip a quick laser pass to Markkanen coming off screens for an open 3.
Vanderbilt’s head is constantly up looking for kickouts. Here’s a recent short-roll example, where he catches Beasley’s pass on the pick-and-roll before zipping a cross-corner kickout to Ochai Agbaji.
All in all, Russell, Beasley and Vanderbilt are immediate rotation players who substantially upgrade the Lakers. Vanderbilt should replace the defensively deficient Thomas Bryant for 20 to 25 minutes per night, Russell and Beasley provide James and Davis space to attack and Russell can act as a secondary creator upgrade. Defensively, this team should at least have more size, though they’ll need to figure out how to manage the point of attack. I also have some off-ball defensive concerns about all three of the acquisitions if Lakers coach Darvin Ham doesn’t use them properly.
But the biggest problem for the Lakers is just that time isn’t on their side. They’re only two games back of the Play-In tournament. But they’re 3.5 games back of a home Play-In Tournament game, and 4.5 games back of being seeded in the playoffs as a top-six seed. To get to the .500 mark that it looks like it’ll take to make the Play-In Tournament in the West, they’ll need to go 16-11, essentially a 49-win pace. To get to the 45-win mark to put them in play for the top-six, they’ll have to win 20 of their last 27 games, essentially a 60-win pace. My bet is that the Lakers make the Play-In, not the playoffs. But I don’t think anyone will actually want to deal with a motivated LeBron in the playoffs as long as Davis can stay healthy (a big if, as always).
Yet the most important aspect of this deal is the flexibility it provides the Lakers in the summer. Time isn’t on the Lakers’ side this season, but acquiring Russell, Vanderbilt, Beasley and Rui Hachimura over the last couple of weeks gives them offseason options. The team has only added Vanderbilt’s $4.7 million salary for next season – Russell and Hachimura are expiring contracts, and Beasley has a team option that must be decided by June 29. The Lakers now only have $95.9 million on their books for next season, including James, Davis, Vanderbilt, Max Christie and Austin Reaves’ minimal restricted free agency cap hold of $2 million. Against a projected $134 million salary cap, that puts L.A. extremely close to maximum cap space if they renounce every other cap hold. But if they don’t have a big free-agent signing in mind, they can still actually act as an over-the-cap team by retaining Russell’s and Hachimura’s cap holds, exercising Beasley’s option, and using their full midlevel exception to add one more piece. On top of all of this, they still have their 2029 first-round pick and will be able to trade the player they choose with their 2023 first-round pick (the Pelicans own swap rights with them this year).
The addition by Westbrook subtraction, the help of the players involved in the deal and the future flexibility it provides is why this deal was a no-brainer for Los Angeles, even if it doesn’t solve all of its issues.
- 37,054
- 12,406
- Joined
- Aug 2, 2008
It is much worse when they do it to a young guy.
Whether it be DLo or Lonzo.
Could kill a career by doing that.
Whether it be DLo or Lonzo.
Could kill a career by doing that.
- 25,005
- 23,717
- Joined
- May 17, 2007
So if Lakers renounce Dlo & Rui and decline Beasley’s trade option they’ll be approaching a max cap slot?
Ok we know where this is headed
Ok we know where this is headed
- 37,054
- 12,406
- Joined
- Aug 2, 2008
So if Lakers renounce Dlo & Rui and decline Beasley’s trade option they’ll be approaching a max cap slot?
Ok we know where this is headed
Sort of
$134 cap
- 87.4mil (Bro & AD)
-10.1 in minimum roster holds
————
$36.5mil in cap space.
They would need let Russell go. Let Rui go. Let Reeves go. Trade their 2023 picks. Decline Beasley’s option. Trade Mo Bamba. Trade Christie. Trade Vanderbilt. Take zero salaries back.
Then you’ll be at Bron/AD/Kyrie. Be over the cap, and basically only minimum deals to field a roster.
- 22,488
- 16,268
- Joined
- Jul 16, 2017
Glad to have you back essential!
- 2,433
- 1,128
- Joined
- Nov 1, 2011
No Max?
- 37,054
- 12,406
- Joined
- Aug 2, 2008
Of note McMenamin said on ESPN (paraphrasing) that the trade last night was the truck driving away on Kyrie in the off-season.
- 18,756
- 10,154
- Joined
- Jan 3, 2011
All of Pelinka trades this season are just to have enough money to go after Kyrie this summer.
- 91,313
- 125,543
- Joined
- Sep 5, 2010
Woops, forgot about him.
- 37,054
- 12,406
- Joined
- Aug 2, 2008
I doubt it.
But if it were. Mark Cuban is not going to do the Lakers any favors. He never has and never will.
They’ve made 4 trades with the Lakers.
AC Green in 99
06 2 players that never played in the NBA
11 the Odom, a 2nd and a pick swap potential for a 1st
12 Darius Johnson Odom for Cash
- 741
- 568
- Joined
- Jul 11, 2018
Why did we traded Thomas Bryant??
MVP
Supporter
- 82,926
- 85,345
- Joined
- Feb 28, 2008
Will be just let Myrie walk for nothing if it doesn't work out?
- 1,548
- 1,204
- Joined
- Oct 8, 2017
- 37,054
- 12,406
- Joined
- Aug 2, 2008
Mark Cuban HATES the Lakers. I don’t think you recognize just how deeply he hates the Lakers. So no, I think he’d rather lose him for a 2029 First to some random team than send him to LA.
Also if the only way Kyrie gets to the Lakers is trade….. He will want things the Lakers don’t have.
My guess is, like 75% chance Kyrie is a Mav next year at a max deal. A 5% chance the Lakers can create a King’s Ransom that decimates them. And 20% chance he finds somewhere else he wants to play.
Realistically what the Lakers could offer is DLo and Beasley, 2023 & 2029 First. So he basically turns Dinwiddie, DFS, 2029 First. For DLo, Beasley, 2023 First and 2029 First. Being the exact same team they were a week ago isn’t worth it for the Mavs
Last edited:
