2022-23 Team Developments: News / Trades / Free Agents / Rumors

This was pretty much just a matter of time, once the kid gave signals that he MIGHT take the mini. It's not really a lot of suspense here, still probably some shock that it came out of the blue. This is the second star to basically land in Rob's lap gift wrapped. He might not give up more than necessary this time. On the flipside, if we get another chip, nobody will care.

 

I'm kinda scurrrd.

 

Tomorrow I want to see Kyrie + Seth for Russ I would let go the +2 1st picks in that case. If THT needed as a sweetener, ok. They are probably also looking for Reeves, Stan. We get bird rights on Seth and Kyrie, no prob on a resign (then again Kyrie, who knows). Joe is iffy with that ankle (the first surgery is not guaranteed to be a fix? Bartelstein says 100% at season start so...) and his salary is disproportionate at this point. We need this to compete with GSW/Clips. We need this and several good vet min pickups. That should be no problem after the Brooklyn deal, some solid vet mins should come our way. I guess Lonnie is our MLE. Geez...I just thought about the Pacific Division next year...Lakers..GSW..Clips..Suns...WT, maybe the 4 best teams all in the same division??

And loving that the LBJ/Kyrie father/son thing is going on. Both have matured including Kyrie in his own, weird way. We are the only team not threatened by his eccentrics at all. LA baby, LALA Land. WE DO WEIRD. Bring it.

 

LOL. I mean... literally, nothing definitive. Good job.

 

Your the best!!

 

BS on his take. Not if Irving let’s anyone else know he’ll walk after this year for sure and then what they traded which will have been substantial will be wasted. Us giving up Brick is already addition by subtraction.

 

The reality of the situation is, if some other team signs him, he may leave but how would the Lakers sign him then? If they don't trade for him now, not sure they will be able to sign him as a FA. I know RW's salary comes off the books but does it clear up enough for us to sign him for what he wants. On top of that, if he gets traded to some team like Dallas, he HAS to kick a** because his next contract will be HIGHLY dependent on how well he does. We lose a lot of leverage if he doesn't come here now.

 

Same reason we let Caruso walk.

 

With some small concessions on the part of LBJ and Kyrie, yes, it is not only totally doable, we could bring in a 4th super star. THT's salary is easily dumped for a pick or 2. Leaving in '23 AD and a few others like Reeves and Stan, figure around 45mil. The '23-'24 cap is likely to be 125-126. 81 mil cap space. Kyrie would be around 40mil (LBJ we would have bird right for), LBJ should be looking to come down a bit too at his age, say he takes 30. So Kyrie at 40, we would still have 40 mil to play with, the ability to bring in another super star, the potential for a 4 super star team....and if Kyrie comes over now in a trade, we can resign Seth Curry or Joe Harris too as we have bird rights. We are covered with bird rights though we could get crazy in the tax. I have a feeling the Lakers are going to enter crazy levels of tax here very soon. We'll see what Jeanie is prepared to do.

 

Sure, agree but am just saying for another team to go ahead and meet Nets asking price when Irving doesn’t want to be there, on top of the baggage he brings normally anyway, plus he’s telling them up front he’ll leave after the one season, then that doesn’t seem to give much incentive to take the risk for another team to do it. Certainly not impossible though and am sure Nets would like nothing more than to not accommodate the player whose actions torpedoed all the 3 star player plans, efforts and money spent to make it happen …. all by himself.

 

The Sixers is a weird one, but Morey is crazy enough to try it for a championship. He traded CP3 after two conference finals for Westbrook.

I’d also say Mavs need a player of Kyrie’s caliber in the worst way. Luka + Kyrie surrounded by 3&D players is a good team. We all saw how far they got this year with Brunson and Kyrie is a significant upgrade. I think Cuban is also willing to risk it like he has before.

 

Maybe. Harden wanted out of Brooklyn to get away from Kyrie I thought though. Yah Mav’s could try it I guess and risk what they give up for the hope they win big and can retain him on the team.

 

Let’s put a cap on our excitement and leave a chance for someone like Cuban/Clippers swooping in just to f*** with the Lakers.

 

I mean...of course every champion team will have a superstar, there's so many around the league. The question is not Curry winning this year or Giannis last year. It is why Durant, Harden, Irving, Kawhi, PG, Luka and so on didn't won.

From all those teams you listed, pretty much all of them had a good supporting cast. Good role players like Klay, Dray, Wiggins, Jrue, Middleton, Lopez. They had good defense and 5/6 players outside the superstar who played big. That's the difference between a champion team and a runner-up.

That's why it's flawed to think you win titles jacking up superstars together. That's why I'm against big 3. It's that supporting cast that gets you that little edge that nails you the ring. Of course you can't also win it without the superstars. They are both essential to win it all

 

Not sure how you're working this out, we definitely couldn't bring in a 4th superstar next year, I'm not even sure we could sign Kyrie. I'm not a cap expert, but this is how I understand it.

The cap next year should be around $130m. We will probably have 4 players contracted for $55.4m:

40m - AD
11m - THT (Player Option)
2.4m - Jones (Player Option)
2m - Christie

These are our cap holds for Bird Rights for $58.8m:

50m - Lebron (Cap Hold to keep his Bird Rights)
6.8m - Nunn (Early Bird Rights)
2m - Reaves (Restricted Early Bird Rights)

So this means we would have roughly 16m in cap space to sign FAs next year when Westbrook expires as is.

Now if we renounced Nunn and Reaves, we would have roughly 24.5m in cap space. If THT and Jones declined their player options (likely for Jones but unlikely for THT) we'd have 38m in cap space.

If we somehow managed to strip our whole roster apart from AD and Lebron's cap hold, we'd be able to split 88m between Lebron and Kyrie - so a bit less than the max but not too bad. It means we'd have three max players, one mMLE player and the other 9 would be minimums. This isn't a great option with Lebron at 39, and the other two maxes being injury prone Kyrie and AD. Our max roster salary cap would be $155m (this is important for being competitive with the Clippers and GSW).

So Wino is spot on, we lose our leverage next off season and if THT takes up his player options and we try to keep Reaves and Christie, we will only have 25m in cap space to sign Kyrie due to Lebron's cap hold. So it probably won't happen next offseason.

I'd much rather try to trade for Kyrie and Harris this offseason. It does a couple of things for us, but one of the things it does is it allows us to carry a much bigger roster salary and be more competitive with the likes of the GSW and the Clippers. We'd be able to have a roster salary of over $200 million. Eg:

50m - Lebron
47m - Kyrie
40m - AD
20m - Harris
20m - Player from THT & Nunn Trade
6.8m - mMLE
6m - Reaves contract extension (towards the mMLE)
2.4m - Jones (takes player option)
2m - Christie
10-14m - 5 minimum players

This allows us to sign 3 max players, and have 4 players earning more than the minimum around them. Big difference if we can get Kyrie this season. But I'm not sure if our ownership is willing to spend that much. We'd be 30m over the luxury tax level and our luxury tax bill would be an additional 150m (because of the repeater tax as well) on top of our roster salary spend.

Balmer would do it though and that's why I ultimately think the clippers will win a championship. He'll sign 2-3 maximums and 8-9 others non minimum players.

 

Great points!

 

few things:

what i note about svtzr's list is not the presence of superstars but the absence of three superstars. and if you expanded the list to the next 3-4 most useful players, they would not be comprised of vet min types, but rather bona fide rotation players who were generally successful both with those teams and with others (read: NOT our current supporting cast). freaking dennis johnson was the league mvp, what, three years before he was the C Bags' 5th guy? pika's point stands as well--superstars are a prerequisite for winning with few exceptions. they are necessary but not sufficient. i'd rather have two real superstars and 5 more guys who are above league average and complemented my top two (see clippers current strategy) than three superstars.

i didn't get alcindor's math, either, but we can definitely sign kyrie if lebron takes a paycut, which he should at this point. harden just took a huge one so his team could compete. i expect no less next summer, should we be in a situation where we use cap space.

that said, i don't anticipate being there. philly and dallas are probably being pushed by bkn because we have literally no competition right now.

who are philly and dallas offering? harris is considered one of the league's worst contracts right now. is maxey on the table? he wasn't for harden. dallas has even less. wood can't be traded until august, and i don't think they picked him up to move him before the season starts. tim hardaway jr? dwight powell? kleber? maybe dinwiddie is of interest (though they moved him recently)? would you rather these pieces than russ's expiring or what it could net? would you tried russ's expiring for three more years of thj or tobias at 20 or 40 million per, respectively?

i don't know. seems fishy to me. pretty sure dallas has said they weren't after irving on more than one occasion, too.

 

We could sign Kyrie and Lebron to 35m contracts next off season and keep THT, Reaves, Jones and Christie. But that’s asking them to take a 30% pay cut. I mean that’s a lot.

Also Harden has earned 100m+ more than Kyrie Irving over his career too.

 

maybe bron goes all the way down to 30 or less for a year with a wink that we'll pay him 50 the following year using his bird rights. again, dirk did this stuff in dallas as his career wound down (got paid more when the team didn't need space, less when they did).

anyway, again, the threat of the above should make it so we don't have to use it.