[::OFFSEASON OVER. Lock Please.::]

[knightngale]

Arsalan Kazemi

so the Lakers worked this guy out?

I know it is the second round but this guy has no speed and can't shoot at 6'8''. COME ON SON.

They keep looking for Luke Walton type players.

 

[pmatic]

He's a real good rebounder and banger.

 

[licensed to ball]

Arsalan Kazemi

so the Lakers worked this guy out?

I know it is the second round but this guy has no speed and can't shoot at 6'8''. COME ON SON.

They keep looking for Luke Walton type players.

Shut up.

Kazemi is going to be a quality NBA player. Like P said, great rebounder, sets great screens, plays solid defense, and is excellent at finishing near the rim.

Sounds like something that we need, desperately. He's going to be a 2nd round steal for whoever takes him.

 

[nflowshoe]

Off subject, what do you guys think would have happened if the lakers developed Marc gasol instead of trading him? Do you think it would have been worst or better?

 

[illvine]

Off subject, what do you guys think would have happened if the lakers developed Marc gasol instead of trading him? Do you think it would have been worst or better?

Hes become the better player (for the future) no doubt, but we got 3 Finals appearances and 2 chips with Pau.

Not to mention we never seem to develop nor play rookies.

I think we undoubtedly made the correct decision. We may still even be able to bring in a couple solid pieces if we decide to trade Pau too

 

[knightngale]

Shut up.

Kazemi is going to be a quality NBA player. Like P said, great rebounder, sets great screens, plays solid defense, and is excellent at finishing near the rim.

Sounds like something that we need, desperately. He's going to be a 2nd round steal for whoever takes him.

The Lakers do not need under sized power forwards. If he can't shoot a jumper he is useless. The only way a player can get away with weak offense is by being a great defender.

The Lakers need shooting, great defense, athleticism, and speed. You have to get lucky to get anything like that in the second round but you have to at least try. No more Luke Waltons or Derrick Characters. :x

 

[teamlakers909]

if we amnesty Kobe, there will be widespread riots across LA.  unless Kobe comes out and hints that he was in on it and plans on coming back the year after next.

 

[essential1]

if we amnesty Kobe, there will be widespread riots across LA.  unless Kobe comes out and hints that he was in on it and plans on coming back the year after next.

That alone won't create enough space for CP3. You'd have to trade Pau and only take back $4-$5mil in contracts at most.

Roster would have like 10 PGs on it



If only we could figure out a way to get Kyle Lowry & Luol Deng..

 

[licensed to ball]

Amnesty Kobe, or Not Amnesty Kobe...

We are not going to get CP3.

 

[Johnny_Cakes]

You think Lowry will come, Essential? Or that it's even feasible?

 

[ajgoulbo]

Lakers are turrible

 

[mrdieselfuel09]

Only way CP3 comes if the Lakers:
-trade Pau to Houston for literally nothing except draft picks and a small expiring contract
-amnesty Artest
-find trading partners for Nash
-sign CP3 to a 1 year contract worth about 6-7 million and resign him the following year to a max deal

 

[pmatic]

Chris Paul on the Lakers?

Somewhere a rumor started about the Lakers potentially clearing enough cap space to sign Chris Paul. Let’s take a look at the plausibility of this idea.

First off, let’s get the obvious red flag out of the way — it would require the Lakers to use their amnesty on Kobe Bryant. While I’m one of the people who thinks the Lakers have to at least give it some serious thought if Kobe’s going to miss the entire season (or come back late in the season and be a shell of his old self, which is more likely), this doesn’t necessarily reflect the team’s thinking on the issue.

I know many Lakers fans would say, “The Lakers would never amnesty Kobe,” talking about loyalty, one of the greatest players ever, P.R. hit, etc. If this was an ordinary year, I might be more inclined to agree with you. However, this year the Lakers are under new management. We have some track record for what the Lakers might or might not do under Jerry Buss. We have a sample size of zero to guide us with Jim Buss in charge.

So just for the sake of argument, let’s assume the Lakers WOULD be willing to amnesty Kobe in order to make this all work. Otherwise, we can just stop here.

This scenario has the Lakers trading Pau Gasol to Houston for Donatas Motiejunas. The last time I looked at the Rockets’ cap situation (link) they could get down to about $41.8 million. If the cap is $60 million (I’m hoping for updated projections soon) that gives them $18.2 million in cap room. Gasol makes $19.3 million, but he also has a trade bonus that would pay him about $700,000 (technically it’s 15%, but it’s limited to the maximum salary), so the Rockets would have to treat him as a $20.0 million incoming player, and they would have to send out at least $1.8 million. Motiejunas will make $1.4 million, so this wouldn’t work. They’d need to send out at least $400,000 more. They have a lot of non-guaranteed salary, but the premise here is that they’re already clearing out these players in order to have this much cap room. They won’t have any non-guaranteed salaries to trade.

[Note: The following paragraph and the resulting analysis were revised. Thanks to @BimaThug for pointing out that Gasol's trade bonus would be constrained by the maximum salary.]

So the Rockets would have to either send out a different player, or add an additional player to the Motiejunas trade. Nothing is a really good fit. It looks like Royce White at $1.7 million will be a little short. Do they add in Terrence Jones or Royce White to Motiejunas make the numbers work? Maybe, but if they do, then the Lakers’ spending ability is reduced. Another possibility would be to trade Thomas Robinson, at $3.5 million instead of Motiejunas. So just for the sake of argument let’s say they do Robinson for Gasol (note that we already had to abandon the original idea where the Rockets send out Motiejunas).

The Lakers would then have a total payroll of $64 million. I assume they’re going to waive Chris Duhon, who has a $1.5 million guarantee. That gets them down to $61.7 million. Now amnesty Kobe, and they’re at $31.2 million.

Next let’s look at their cap room. If they’re going to retain their Bird rights to Howard (which they’d need in order to re-sign him above the cap), his cap hold would be $20.5 million. There’d also be four cap holds totaling about $2 million. That brings them to $53.2 million.

This means Chris Paul would have to sign for $6.8 million. Not going to happen.

Let’s look at it a different way — say they renounce Dwight Howard and try to sign both with cap room. Dwight’s $20.5 million cap hold comes off, but we need to add $500,000 back in as a separate cap hold. They’d be at $33.2 million, with $26.8 million to split between the two of them.

Scenario 2a: Paul takes the max; Howard takes what’s left — Paul would get $18.7 million, leaving $8,1 million for Howard. Not going to happen.

Secnario 2b: They split the cap room — each takes about $13.4 million. Also not going to happen.

Finally, let’s assume that if the Lakers sign Chris Paul they don’t need Steve Nash any more, and waive/stretch him. His cap hit would be spread out over five years, $3.8 million per year. The Lakers would have to be willing to have Nash on their cap for $3.8 million for the next five years, but let’s assume they do. Their cap for Nash this summer would drop from $9.3 million to $3.8 million, saving $5.5 million. Let’s re-run the numbers:

Scenario 3a: Leave Howard on the cap, sign Paul, and then use Bird rights on Dwight — Their cap amount would be $47.7 million. Paul would get $12.3 million ($6.4 million less), and Howard gets his full $20.5 million. Paul doesn’t sign for that.

Scenario 3b: Renounce Howard, sign Paul, then re-sign Howard with cap room — Paul gets his full $18.7 million, and Howard gets $13.6 million. Howard doesn’t do this.

Scenario 3c: Split the cap room — They would split $32.3 million, each getting $16.1 million — Paul gets $2.6 million less, and Howard gets $4.4 million less. This may be the most palatable option, but again, BOTH players would have to agree to this. I think it’s very, very unlikely.

But let’s say scenario 3c is the one they want to go with. The Lakers would then be back at the cap, and would have the following on their roster:

1 – Chris Paul/Steve Blake
2 – Jodie Meeks
3 – Metta World Peace/Robinson (I know he’s more of a 4)
4/5 – Howard/Jordan Hill

They’d also have a 2nd round draft pick and the Room Mid-Level ($2.652 million). With this and minimum salary contracts they’d need to sign at least three players, including a starting shooting guard (a tall order given their budget) and a lot more depth at 2/3. They’d need to get younger, more athletic, and have better shooters. Not impossible, but there would be a lot of work to do in the front office.

But to get to this point, the following would have to happen:

1. Houston would have to agree to trade Robinson for Gasol. Remember, the Rockets are also clearing cap space in order to land a big-time free agent. I know they like Gasol (they almost traded for him in 2011, in the famous “basketball reasons” debacle), but is this the best they could do this year? I’m sure they like the idea of luring Howard to the Rockets — do they abandon that idea in order to help Howard and Chris Paul team up on the Lakers?

2. The Lakers would have to be willing to waive and stretch Steve Nash, and live with his cap hit over the next five years.

3. The Lakers would have to be willing to amnesty Kobe Bryant. They would have to make this decision in early July — probably too early to get a realistic prognosis on his recovery time.

4. Paul would have to agree to come to the Lakers, taking $2.6 million less than he could make from the Clippers or elsewhere, AND take one fewer year and smaller raises than he could get from the Clippers.

5. Howard would have to agree to return to the Lakers, taking $4.4 million less than he could make on the open market.

Is all this possible? Sure. But I think the possibility is extremely remote.

UPDATE:

I got a couple good questions on Twitter:

Q: Don’t the Lakers have a team option on Jodie Meeks?

A: Yes, they do. They could pass on the option, he would become a free agent, they could renounce him, and they would then save additional dollars on their cap. The savings would be about $1.05 million. I didn’t include this scenario for two reasons: 1) Even if the full amount went to one of Howard or Paul, it wouldn’t change the situation — they’d still have to take a big pay cut; 2) If the Lakers amnestied Kobe, they’d be extremely thin at SG, and could hardly stand to thin the roster further at that position; 3) The Lakers would have to make a decision on Meeks by June 30, and couldn’t even talk to Paul about it until July 1 — so they’d have to drop Meeks before they’d have any idea whether this unlikely scenario is even possible.

Q: What if Metta World Peace takes his opt-out and becomes a free agent?

A: Then the Lakers save about $7.7 million, and the financial objections I raised become less of a problem. But from what I hear, even though Metta raised the possibility of opting-out, it isn’t going to happen. I’d be shocked if it did.

And since a player opting-out isn’t something that’s under the team’s control, I didn’t want to consider it for this piece.

Q; Can the Lakers trade Steve Nash to Toronto, say for Kyle Lowry and Terrence Ross, rather than waiving him?

A: Let’s assume they could. Lowry could be waived, and his guarantee of $1 million would be on the books. Ross is on the books for $2.7 million — so that’s $3.7 million total, Waiving & stretching Nash leaves $3.8 million on their books — hardly any savings at all.

So this idea already adds an additional contingency to our unlikely scenario where all these other pieces have to fall together, making it even more unlikely. And even if it does work, the trade idea is further constrained by the requirement that the Lakers would have to find a trade that brings back significantly less than $3.8 million.

Q: Does the maximum salary affect Pau Gasol’s trade kicker?

A: Yes it does! I neglected this in the original article. I’ve revised the analysis to take the limitation on Gasol’s trade kicker into account. Thanks to @BimaThug for the catch.

Link

 

[statis22]

Bimathug, the unofficial Houston Rockets cap-oligist. Always solid articles.

But on another Gasol to Houston scenario...................yea.

 

[licensed to ball]

Only way CP3 comes if the Lakers:
-trade Pau to Houston for literally nothing except draft picks and a small expiring contract
-amnesty Artest
-find trading partners for Nash
-sign CP3 to a 1 year contract worth about 6-7 million and resign him the following year to a max deal

the only realistic possibility is MAYBE Artest being amnestied.

NONE of the rest of those are happening.

We had a chance to trade Pau to Houston for quality pieces and picks when they were really interested in him.
But that ship has sailed. They might still be slightly interested but we're certainly not getting anything close to 1st round draft picks.

 

[mosk33toe]

I love pipe dreams and have made numerous ones for trading Dwight Howard for either Noah and Deng or Hortford and Korver or Love and Schved, but this Chris Paul pipe dream isn't even worth dreaming about, there is no way he comes here.

I'm actually looking forward to seeing how this Artest and Pau thing handle themselves. I can see Artest being crazy and taking a pay cut to come back, and I can see Pau being traded (although I hope he doesn't) but I think we really need to get someone on the wings that can guard the quick PG's and SG's and maybe a good spot up shooter (something Jodi Meeks was supposed to do, and a slew of other "shooters" we have brought in).

If we can pick up one good wing player that is a lock down defender, one good shooter, and maybe another defensive minded big, I think we'll be good.

 

[essential1]

You think Lowry will come, Essential? Or that it's even feasible?

He won't be a FA. Feasible? Not really

 

[teamlakers909]

you guys tripping if you think kobe gets amnestied without his consent. 

 

[thachosen123]

Shut up.

Kazemi is going to be a quality NBA player. Like P said, great rebounder, sets great screens, plays solid defense, and is excellent at finishing near the rim.

Sounds like something that we need, desperately. He's going to be a 2nd round steal for whoever takes him.

The Lakers do not need under sized power forwards. If he can't shoot a jumper he is useless. The only way a player can get away with weak offense is by being a great defender.

The Lakers need shooting, great defense, athleticism, and speed. You have to get lucky to get anything like that in the second round but you have to at least try. No more Luke Waltons or Derrick Characters. :x

Agreed, Lakers HAVE to take a perimeter player in the 2nd rd this year. Some ppl might view it as a useless pick, but we can definitely find a guy to come in and play a role for our bench

 

[denni5themenace]

man who started this cp3 crap?

 

[Johnny_Cakes]

Started with CP3's trade being wrongfully rejected. No one was expecting that trade for CP3 to happen when it did, we were all preoccupied with getting Dwight and at best day-dreaming about having CP3 and Dwight together.

 

[darthska]

Dem feels, my man. :\

 

[pmatic]

 

[Maximus Meridius]

After seeing us struggle so much against the Dubs, I realized we're not as good as we thought we were.
Tim is unfortunately just too old now...the way Bogut defended him in the 4th quarter was embarrassing.  


I don't even know how we beat you guys in the first round, if Kobe was playing we probably wouldn't have. 

 You guys are going to be fine next year when Kobe's back, our team is just going to get older and slower unfortunately. 

Don't tell me you in off-season mode already.

 

[Johnny_Cakes]

After seeing us struggle so much against the Dubs, I realized we're not as good as we thought we were.
Tim is unfortunately just too old now...the way Bogut defended him in the 4th quarter was embarrassing.  


I don't even know how we beat you guys in the first round, if Kobe was playing we probably wouldn't have. 

 You guys are going to be fine next year when Kobe's back, our team is just going to get older and slower unfortunately. 

Won't tolerate this kind of talk until you guys are down a game. It's still anyone's series.