2019/20 Players' Transactions: Breaking News , Trades, Free Agents, And Rumors

Probably not if we're all honest. Vander was a terrific scorer at the G-League level. Payton II is not the same type of scorer.

I'd say if we're lucky we get another Hart type.

 

Probably not. I think the Lakers saw everything they needed from Vander and it was clear he wasn't an NBA player to them. The point of this system is to get young guys that might develop into contributors. No point in holding Blue here for any longer if he's not going to make the cut.

 

Sirron, this post has now been up for 1 hour and 40 minutes and we have no response? Are you OK?

 

“You don’t make organizational changes for DeMarcus Cousins”. I love Woj.

 

Yeah. In theory, Cousins and PG-13 fit perfectly with our current core as KCP and and Lopez replacements. We can even keep one of Clarkson or Randle (both if PG-13 and Cousins were to take a slightly less than the max).

But Anthony Davis is a better player than PG-13 and Boogie/Davis are struggling to make the playoffs. Our supporting cast around the two would be better, but no where near good enough to make up the gulf between the Rockets, Spurs and of course Warriors. Heck, you could make the case that neither PG-13 or Cousins would be the 3rd best player if they were on the Warriors.

 

But what if we were to sign all three? Maybe together they could create something...something so amazing that we would never have been able to imagine it without seeing it with our own eyes.

 

So with the news that Julius isn't fetching as much as the Lakers need in order to move him and they're not getting takers on Deng's contract without multiple 1sts attached, how do they get to two max deals?

Assuming Deng isn't willing to help, we have to waive him no matter what. That's an added 7.362 million dollars.
Randle's cap hold will be a problem for our cap, but we should at least have an idea of what FAs are coming before it's a critical problem. He'll be 12.448 million.

That means we're sitting at:
Clarkson- 12.5
Randle- 12.448
Lonzo- 7.462
Deng- 7.362
Ingram- 5.757
Nance- 2.272
Kuzma- 1.69
Hart- 1.655
Zubac- 1.545
Bryant- 1.378
Cap Holds- 1.746*
Total- 55.815 million**

*- this operates under the assumption that Deng counts as a cap hold... I'm not sure if that's the case or not. He certainly counts against the cap, but I'm not sure if his salary also counts as a hold as well. I'm going to assume it doesn't and that his salary is enough to justify a cap hold. If anyone can make that determination for me, please feel free to correct me.
**- This means waiving our Bird Rights to Lopez, Brewer, Ennis and we certainly don't extend anything towards KCP.

The projected cap for 2018/2019 is set at 101 million which leaves us only 45.185 million to spend.

A max contract does not actually come out to the exact 25/30/35% number, but for these budgeting purposes I'll use the full amount.

At 45.185 million we have enough to get Paul George or Boogie Cousins (30.3 million) and still have 14.303 million left to spend. A good amount that might be able to nab you a solid player (Avery Bradley?). Maybe you just give a balloon payment one-year contract to KCP or Lopez again?

So how do they get to two full max deals while keeping Julius? They'd have to:
1. Trade Clarkson with no salary returning
2. Trade away some combination of Nance AND TWO of Bryant, Hart, Kuzma, Zubac.

Let's say they traded Clarkson/Nance/Zubac to a team for a lottery protected future 1st round pick and waive Bryant. That clears 15.367 million and gets you up to 59.756 million dollars. If you sign a max deal (30.3) million that leaves you with 30.834 million or juuuuuuust enough to add another max deal. Except of course this is only a max deal for George/Cousins and not for LeBron... This also means gutting at least some of the team's depth in order to pursue George/Cousins which is looking unlikely. You'd end up with a team that looks roughly like this:

Lonzo/Ennis?
George/Hart
Ingram/Brewer?
Randle/Kuzma
Cousins/?

So how do they get two full max deals while keeping Julius if one of those deals is LeBron?:
1. They can't.

If LeBron is one of the players that's willing to sign here, you roll into the summer with Julius's Bird Rights and then you waive those Bird Rights ONLY IF LeBron has agreed to sign here. You might find that George doesn't want to come, but LeBron wants to anyway and you can keep Julius then (meaning only one max deal), but otherwise there's no real way to make that happen.

1. Trade Clarkson with no salary returning
2. Waive BR to Julius

That clears up 23.884 million and brings the Lakers' available cap budget up to 69.069 million dollars. You could sign LeBron (35.5 million) and that would leave 34.151 million which is more than enough to sign George as well. It'd leave a small amount of cash (4.433) million to sign a veteran *cough*Wade*cough* and the Lakers would have the 4 million room exception to sign another vet as well. The pro to this one? You get LeBron and you keep most of your depth. The con? You give up two good young pieces. As much as Julius has shown, this seems like the best scenario for most everyone as Julius would almost certainly go to Dallas (home) for a nice deal. In this scenario you end with:

Lonzo/Wade?
George/Hart
Ingram/Brewer?
LeBron/Kuzma
Lopez?/Zubac/Bryant