Official 2016 Free Agency Thread

rapid fire thoughts on what i missed:

rodg: speights, vujacic, barbosa...you're trolling me. i can't stand speights in particular. this offseason would be nightmare. hibbert/lin redux, but somehow less talented. all due respect. /deniro

batum/horford/derozan/conley: simply put, i think their teams keep them if they offer max or near it. if they don't, it's open season, and the lakers are certainly in running for some.

wade's posturing, but i'd play into it. screw riley. use a rusty garden implement.

whiteside: no choice but to bring max; i'd put odds at 30% right now, which is higher than i had them a month ago.

durant: (more due respect...) gtfo here, meeting with the C Bags and not the lakers. that's garbage. they're not that good or that close to contention. if you were serious about leaving and teaming up with folks, you could have told the lakers, and they could have actually traded for jimmy butler, instead of getting their a**** turned down in embarrassing fashion after opening up the entire roster for trade. i could go on here. i don't even blame him for the clippers. at least they have stars in place and a coach who's won a title. but boston? why don't you kick jim buss's dog while you're at it? get out and stay out.

i still want barnes at near max. i don't even care, suckas!

abeer3 out.

 

Wrote a couple of pieces you guys might like:

Top 10 Free Agent Options For The Lakers: http://www.lakersnation.com/top-10-options-for-the-los-angeles-lakers-in-free-agency/2016/06/27/

Top 5 Free Agents For The Lakers To Avoid: http://www.lakersnation.com/5-nba-free-agents-the-lakers-should-stay-away-from/2016/06/29/

 

i'd move my man marvin up the list a few spots, and evan turner is a no-go for me. otherwise, i agree. i also agree with the players on the avoid list. all decent players; none should be here.

 

Good read. Rough that the article on 'Players to Stay Away From' starts with a video of DAR

 

Ha, never thought of that, just grabbed our most recent video and tossed it in there.

 

ok...i guess...i just...i just want to vomit when i hear speights. it blinds me to everything else.

 

If Luke has us running something similar to GS, Batum in the Iggy role is perfect. Whiteside as a healthier more athletic Bogut. Or horfort. Really liking our options and hoping we don't save our space waiting for a Durant/Lebum to fall into our laps.

 

Would you guys spend $50 million on Batum and Whiteside combined?

 

Maybe I'm wrong or just being overly negative, but anyone who thinks the Lakers haven't lost that sort of surreal feeling/respect around the league is just misguided.

For years you could use the excuse, who would want to play for Byron? Who would want to play for a team with no young guys? Who would want to sign up to play with an injured Kobe and thats it....and all of those excuses would of been valid.

Now we have a pretty likable guy, a players coach in Walton who players would enjoy playing for. We have these young pieces in place and they are only getting better. We have a surplus in money, the list goes on. With all of these positives we still seem to be more on the outside looking in on these FAs. Durant literally could come in sign WITH Whiteside (or whoever he chooses) and probably another pretty good player or so. You can't tell me thats not a pretty good team. Yet he doesn't even want to come and look to see what we got.

I think it is pretty likely we are looking at those sort of second tier/third tier guys as our "FAs" this year. I could be completely wrong, but I do think we need to rebuild that once glorious image the Lakers once had.

 

Yes, I'd pay $50 million to Whiteside and Batum. The goal is to look competitive this season; then, next summer, it will make our recruiting efforts to acquire a max (Westbrook) much less difficuit.

 

"Last summer’s free agency was hardly a Jackson bonanza and now he has to fiddle with his own free agents. Jackson wants to re-sign Lance Thomas, Kevin Seraphin and Williams. Williams will be recruited by at least the Lakers and Suns, according to a source."

From NYPost - http://nypost.com/2016/06/29/jeff-hornacek-to-phil-jackson-get-us-some-good-players/

 

That's good. Williams provides some positional versatility and much needed depth; so does Marvin Williams.

 

Some swing teams to monitor:

• The Hawks are reluctant to offer Horford the fifth year only they can dangle, and if they hold firm, they are at grave risk of losing him for nothing, per league sources. (Watch out for the Pistons on Horford; with Wednesday's trade of Meeks, they are one tiny move away from being able to fit his max. They are working to schedule a meeting with Horford over the first 48 hours of free agency, sources say. Horford's fit alongside Andre Drummond is another question entirely.)
  
  Atlanta already traded Jeff Teague for a rookie. Kent Bazemore will have suitors everywhere, including in Milwaukee, Memphis and Brooklyn, sources say. If Bazemore and Horford walk, the Hawks will be at a fork in the road: rush to fill the gaps with high-priced talent or trade Millsap and race to the bottom?
  
  Seriously: How many teams are worse than a Hawks team without Horford, Bazemore and Millsap? Three or four, if that? Mike Budenholzer's role as as both coach and GM is the wild card; coaches vomit at rebuilds, but his title also provides the job security to survive one.
  
  
• Dallas dreams of luring both Mike Conley and Hassan Whiteside on max deals, per ESPN BlackBerry maven Marc Stein, but absent a series of salary-sloughing trades, the Mavericks can't open up the requisite $49 million in room with Chandler Parsons' cap hold sitting on the books. Rumors have already burbled that the Mavs don't want to offer Parsons a max after his knee issues, and that Parsons could seek his payday elsewhere.
  
  The Mavs have whiffed on every big-name free agent since they let Tyson Chandler walk, and they will have a ton of competition for Whiteside and Conley; the Grizzlies are almost as confident about re-signing Conley as they were with Marc Gasol last offseason.
  
  The Mavericks can keep Parsons' Bird rights as they negotiate with bigger fish to hedge against the nightmare scenario of losing out on everyone, though Parsons can torpedo that by signing someplace else right away. Teams are terrified about Parsons' knees and crow they will hold firm at a number below his max. But Parsons is eligible only for the lowest-tier max deal, starting at about $22 million, and a GM on thin ice with chambered cash might bite that bullet -- especially if he can persuade Parsons to take a shorter deal.
  
  Parsons might want to lock in as much moola as possible now; he knows his knees better than anyone, and the uncertainty of a revised collective bargaining deal looms.
  
  Regardless: Dallas again faces serious downside on the treadmill of mediocrity. Dirk Nowitzki doesn't want to leave, but he's also tired of losing in the first round.
  
  
  
  http://espn.go.com/nba/story/_/id/1...-midnight-friday-nba-contracts-flying-shelves

 

Horford and Whiteside are both available. We'll probably offer max to both, but I think the Lakers first choice is Horford. Although older, he doesn't come with the baggage, and as I mentioned, he has a body of work that has been very consistent and been very productive for Atlanta for a very long time. Not to mention his skillset fits right next to Julius almost perfectly.

@therealdeal what is Horford's max we can offer up to? He also wants a large dominican population and Southern California is a haven for diversity. His wife is also an actress/singer. He can have the best of both worlds, get paid, and be in Los Angeles. Sure, it's a rebuilding squad, so the challenges is does a 30 year-old want to play for a rebuilding squad? In meeting that challenge, you must convince him that other players will follow suit, and we'll do whatever we can to make sure and put a winner on the floor. That of course is up to management.

Year

With Hawks With another team
1 $25,976,470 $25,976,470
2 $27,924,705 $27,145,411
3 $29,872,940 $28,314,352
4 $31,821,175 $29,483,293
5 $33,769,410 ———————
Total $149,364,700 $110,919,526

Found it.