2024-25 Team Developments: Trades / Free Agents / News / Rumors / Ideas

If the Lakers can’t get DeJaunte Murray, I would be completely ok with the front office trading for Vucevic and Caruso for a combination of Rui or Vando and Gabe plus a 1st rounder and a few second rounders.

It would fill a lot of needs on the existing roster and we can get “stars in their roles” with Vucevic being a very good starting center, which allows for AD to go back to playing PF. The return of Caruso will be much welcomed and may be plausible since he’s in a contract year and the Bulls risk him leaving for nothing if they don’t want to pay him.

Lebron would go back to playing the 3, Reaves the 2, and we could even re-sign DLo

 

Who wouldn’t “rather that” in the first place? Well … almost who wouldn’t.

 

Hartenstein could fetch 4 years/$80m-$100m this summer. I wish there was a path for him to get to LA.

Some of the buzz surrounding other centers heading into the summer

Claxton staying?

Allen staying because he's close with Spider?

Jonas will be a hot commodity

Dallas might have to move on from Maxi

 

Click to see the full list and write up for each

Some names he suggest we take a look at and his report on each of our guys:

No. 30: Andre Drummond

No. 29: Taurean Prince

No. 23: Chris Paul

No. 22: Kyle Lowry

No. 21: Jonas Valančiūnas

No. 16: D'Angelo Russell

No. 1: LeBron James

 

Would yall accept him if we didn't have to trade picks? What if we can get Caruso back with him?

 

Not really a feasible way to get him, but he's owed 40mil per year for 3 more years, and can't stay on the court. If we make that trade, the GM needs to be shot.

He only played 25 games last year, but prior to that, have to admit he produced





Caruso, Vucevic, and Caruso for Lebron and....DLO? Lots of people would have to play nice to make that happen. Just don't see it.

 

Yeah that's a nasty a** contract. If one of our max guys went down the team would be toast.

And that's extremely likely

 

I would entertain it if the cost is just salary matching. Rui/Gabe/JHS/Wood can do it.

We would be able to keep Reaves and Vanderbilt, but would need to fill out the roster with the MLE and minimums, but we would have to do that anyway with whatever happens this offseason.

 

I'd trade Chokeolo, Rui and Vincent for Lavine, Caruso and a top 5 protected 1st.

 

No no and no.

We don't have the salaries for it to be a salary dump trade. We're giving up too much value. He's at $43m. So if you cobble together our "excess" of JHS, Wood, and Gabe you are just shy of $18m outgoing. And if you want AC, that's another $10m in salary you have to match. That's hurdle one.

Hurdle two is he's not worth $43m (he's worth about half that) . He's a walking injury. Three years of him as a max level salary... no way.

Hurdle three is Chicago is bullish (pun intended) on AC. They wanted two picks to even listen to offers and even then, they're not interested

 

Caruso is on an expiring 10M deal this season. For all the talk, about how much the Bulls value Alex, it will be interesting to see, if they actually plan on paying him, some decent money this summer.

 

Dlo would need to opt in to be tradable.

 

He'd start in Chicago, Lonzo is probably done. He wouldn't have to worry, about choking in the playoffs there, anytime soon either. He could just hoop and be himself there.

 

That kind of trade might not be as viable under the new rules

Previously I had proposed a similar package and thought it would be enough to trade for a ~$40 million player because it’s within 25%, but apparently the new tax apron rules are much more restrictive.

Been watching some of Trevor Lane’s roster construction videos on LN and he’s given me the impression that we pretty much would have to send out more outgoing salary in any trade than we bring in. Otherwise we’d get hard capped at the first apron

Which I suppose might be workable if DLo walks, maybe Lebron takes a slight paycut, and then maybe we also have access to use some of the NTMLE. But it would be pretty complicated and we’d be pushing up very close against the hard cap

 

No.

 

hard pass on lavine

 

Every season is different, you have to take advantage of your shot, when the opportunity presents itself. I don't think this young core group, we have right now, of Russell, Reaves, Hachimura and Vanderbilt, is going to get it done. Chokeolo blew our crack at another ring last season.

 

Do the Lakers have the NTMLE or just the Mini MLe?

in either case, it would be good this offseason to use whatever is available for a longer term contract. The reason would be with the salary cap going up because of the new media deal, the NTMLE deal is going to look cheap in 2 years.

The target players should be younger (in their mid 20s) so that they are very tradable assets in those two years. The players off the FA list that immediately come to mind that may be available for the NTMLE are Gary Trent Jr, Immanuel Quickley, Bruce Brown, Miles Bridges, Hartenstein, Tyus Jones, Caleb Martin.

Any of these guys would be solid signings on a 4 year NTMLE deal.

Some surprising comments though where they think Tobias Harris might be a league minimum player. If he can be had for that price I hope we go hard after him. I also have a strange feeling we end up with Buddy Hield somehow lol.