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

Tough break (no pun intended). I really enjoy Wes Matthews game and who he is as a player. I remember when he torn his achilles and everyone on both benchs came over to check on him. He's a respected player in that locker room.

Heal up and like the Doc said, take that player's option!

 

The Mavs committed to 18 mil for Matthews, and 23 mil for Harrison Barnes makes me feel so much better about our situation than I do. I mean, Deng and Mosgov were bad deals, but it could be worse. Oh and Dirk taking years 10 mil deal really helped that team stay competetive. Way to buy into that nonsense, Kobe looks pretty smart in that department too. Get your money while you can, you don’t owe the franchise a pay cut, especially one with a billionaire owner.

 

I don't see how he could reasonably expect to get that much on the market...

Hell I'm not sure he can expect to get that much on a total contract again depending on the severity of this injury. How many teams with cap space are spending 20 million on a guy in his position? There's better options available.

 

Stress fracture in the leg will heal. But you're right. People are talking about the lack of cap space out there this summer. If people are saying Julius (a 23 yr old pf that is dominating) may not have many options, what sort of options are available for a 31 yr old sf that's averaging less than 13 ppg on 40% shooting?

 

23 mil for a “very useful player”, good for the Mavs I guess, that’s everyone’s dream. Dude averages 18 and 6, he’s not worth that money.

We had room for a 2nd max still, nobody wanted to come here and join a broken Kobe. It was what it was. We would have sucked whether Kobe took less money or not, so Kobe got paid while we sucked, and good for him. I maintain that it’s stupid to take $5 per year to “help” your team sign Harrison Barnes types and be freakin terrible when your owner is a billionaire.

 

So with that article about Julius's salary expectations, I'm having sugarplum dreams right now and I want to illustrate why it's going to be so important to the Lakers that they get at least one max player this summer.

First let's go ahead and assume we're waiving Bird Rights to Lopez, Pope, Thomas, Frye, waiving Ennis's non-guarantee, waiving our rights to Wear and Caruso as well (don't worry, they'll try to bring them back probably).

Secondly, let's assume we extend Julius his 5.5 million dollar QO which gives us a cap hold of 12.5 million for him.

Now for the fun stuff:
1) Trade for Paul George. This is in the best interest of all involved. The Thunder are cash strapped once Carmelo opts in. With Paul George potentially walking, they can instead trade for our 2nd round pick or the rights to an overseas player (for the sake of argument, let's say it's for 2 2nds). This opens a TPE for them that they can use at some point to maybe acquire help during their next season or instead let it expire so their owner doesn't have to pay a massive bill for a middling team. It's better for us because it saves us roughly ten million for this summer which lets us move around for more assets. It's better for Paul because we can immediately extend him for 4 years (5 years total) with a better annual bonus or he can sign a 1+1 extension so that he hits the 9 year veteran mark and then sign a much bigger deal the next summer. A rare win-win-win.

That leaves us with George, Deng, Randle Cap Hold, Lonzo, Ingram, Kuzma, Hart, Zubac, Bryant, minimum cap holds: 27.8 million dollars.

2) At this point, we're golden. We could attach Zubac to the Cleveland Pick, and a future pick to Deng and try to take back minimal salary OR we could simply waive Deng and maybe Zubac in order to get to a max deal for LeBron. Waiving Deng and Zubac means freeing up 11.5 million and getting us to 39.3 million. LeBron's max is 35.4 million. That leaves us with 4.5 million to spend on top of that. Of course, if we attach enough assets to Deng to dump him completley, we could end up with 46.1 million dollars while keeping ALL of our young core.

In that scenario, you can sign LeBron and still have 11.3 million to spend. Can you convince Isaiah to take 11.3 million for a year as a 6th man candidate?... What else is he looking at on the open market?

You can still bring Brook back with the room exception as well.

3) That of course brings us to the cap of 101 million dollars with a roster of:
Ball/Thomas
George/Hart
Ingram/vet min
James/Kuzma
Randle/Lopez/Bryant

At that point, you can give Julius a 4/60 million dollar deal. It's above his perceived market and we can exceed the cap to do it. The exciting part is, that's only a small bump over the cap itself so we're looking at a total bill for that team of: 106 million dollars.

Why is that important? Because we're staying under any sort of luxury tax penalties and fielding a ridiculously deep and talented team. Of course, this is the best case scenario, but it's one that is at least plausible. I could see a potential adjustment of possibly missing out on one of Hart or Kuzma in order to dump Deng, but the rest of it is completely within reason as long as the Lakers are thinking along the same lines as we all are.

The truly exciting part is that even if Paul George pulls the 1+1 deal so he can get a massive extension (it'd be worth more than James's at that point, around 4/160 million I believe), we can find a way to get at or below the luxury tax line because of the one-year deal for Thomas (or a suitable replacement at 11 million). Heck if we need to, we can cut/move Brook as well (hopefully Thomas is ready to go by then). In fact through the 4 years of LeBron's contract, the Lakers are dealing on house money. It's not until 2020 when Ingram needs to get paid and not until 2021 when Hart, Ball, and Kuzma need to get paid. At that point LeBron is on the way down and if we move on from him or he retires, we can avoid paying massive luxury tax penalties at that point as well for at least a little while. Eventually we're either going to have to pay a massive amount of money to keep the group together or break them into a smaller unit, but there's a good 4 year period where we have one of the most complete rosters I've ever seen while paying pennies on the dollar.

This is why I think it's important for the Lakers to strike now while they can. Once this window closes in 2020, we're operating with "just" the kids and they may or may not have what it takes to get it done. We might have to break them up before we can be truly competitive. At least this way, we can ride high with them and let the chips fall where they may. For the Lakers, this is a no-brainer. Being able to cash in on this team for four years when they're competing at the highest level and going deep into the playoffs, this is a cash cow waiting to happen.

 

That's awesome...except there is no way we sign IT if we sign Lebron.

 

I don't think it's a personal thing between those two. If Isaiah accepted a bench role, then I think they'd be fine. The problem was LeBron wanted help right now with Kyrie leaving and Thomas just isn't physically capable of being that guy for him. Seeing LeBron smile while guarding him when we played Cleveland told me they're probably not on great terms, but they're probably not on awful terms either. Hopefully... maybe.

Either way, you've got 11 million to spend on a 6th man who wants it. If IT doesn't want it, that's his loss.

 

Yep. And locking up Randle has become key as well. There's a couple guys in my office who are very knowledgeable Laker fans who think Randle is important enough that if we have to trade Ingram or Ball to dump Deng's salary so we can retain Randle, you have to consider it. Randle is not new and shiny like Ball and to an extent Ingram. But the way he has blossomed at the ripe old age of 23, can we be certain Ball and Ingram can have this type of impact? And it's a winning impact too. It's not big stats with us losing.

 

Heh heh, real, you so crazy.

 

How I felt writing that:


What I actually looked like: