@JohnnyNBA I'm not even sure that team can't legitimately compete this year. I think they could. Next year the Lakers literally will not have the salary structure to make a team like that. Only reason I can see to avoid that route is financial...although playoff rev would prob make that up.
@JohnnyNBA Meanwhile, feels plausible for them to nab all of Bojan, Burks, and maybe Myles Turner w/in the next 2 weeks, keep them all + Reaves and maybe one of Walker/T. Bryant + add another quality TPML-type guy + '23 draft pick. Any way you slice it that's a better team this year & next.
@EricPincus apologies if you’ve answered, but if Lakers let Russ, Bev, Nunn, Walker expire they have approx $30 mil in cap room this summer. To re-sign Reaves to a contract of, say, $10 mil per, that’d have to come out of that $, right? And they’d have only MLE left additionally?
@EricPincus Not to harp on this TOO much... but that's also the issue with consistently signing guys to short TMLE contracts. Losing the opportunity to accumulate bird rights every time...which is the only way to get out of this majority minimum roster scenario. It almost feels intentional.
@EricPincus They could trade Russ for $47M worth of salary (give or take). Let him expire and go the cap space route and they probably replace him with approx. $30M worth of salary. They've slowly whittled down what the CAN spend & now are using that as an excuse for roster of min contracts.