The Los Angeles Lakers continue to make every effort to prove to their front office that this team is worthy of a major job. After starting the season 2-10, they have since gone 17-12 despite injuries to james lebron and Anthony Davis. In a very open Western Conference, there’s every reason to believe this team could seriously compete for the championship with the right deal.
But according to ESPN’s Dave McMenamin, the team isn’t thinking exclusively about this season. On an episode of the od, his YouTube show with Ohm Youngmisuk, he reported that the Lakers were looking for a deal that would have multi-year benefits. “If the right deal emerges, it will make them – in their eyes – a better team over the next three years, that’s their priority,” McMenamin said. “They want the team to get to the best possible level while LeBron James is still on the roster. But if that means not getting that deal done in February and playing the rest of this season with the squad they have and knowing that they feel like there will be a better deal in July in the offseason, they will.”
In theory, that’s not necessarily the worst idea. Obviously, a multi-year window is better than a one-shot deal, so adding players who are still in their prime or approaching their prime could be of benefit beyond this season. Where the plan starts to go awry is in the idea of waiting for a deal.
Obviously, there’s no guarantee that James and Davis will be as good next season as they are now. James is 38 years old. It will eventually decline. But even if he doesn’t, there’s a financial incentive for the Lakers to act now.
Included between Russell Westbrook, Patrick Beverly and Kendrick Nunn, they have over $60 million in expiring salaries that would be easy to trade right now. Add to that their minimum wage contracts and that figure tops $70 million. With so much expiring money at their disposal, they could easily match the salary of virtually any realistic player or combination of players on the commercial market. They would have to include draft picks to get someone worth it, of course, but they wouldn’t have to worry about making a salary-legal trade.
Things change this offseason, when those contracts expire and the Lakers should have about $34 million in cap space. This cap space would allow the Lakers to sign free agents from other teams, but it would severely limit their ability to trade for big salaries on other teams simply because $34 million of space is significantly less than $70 million. dollars of expiring salary. Of course, waiting and operating with cap space would make it much easier for the Lakers to reset their luxury tax clock and avoid the repeat tax next season, which could also motivate a decision to wait.
By making a trade now and bringing in players with longer-term deals or contracts that the team would expect to renew in the offseason, the Lakers would be positioning themselves to pay that recurring tax. If they chose to sign free agents instead of improving in the trade market, they could also keep their first-round picks in 2027 and 2029 rather than deal with them. They could theoretically move those picks later, but with less matching salary at their disposal, their ability to make a legal trade for an expensive player or group of players would be more complicated.
At this point, no deal seems imminent. A lot can change by the deadline, but all signs continue to point that the Lakers won’t make a major move by the deadline. Unless an obvious move with a multi-year upside presents itself, the Lakers seem content to ride out a disappointing season.
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