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

I would see how much that you have to use to retain Spence. Just make it higher than the min to swat away potential competing offers.

Then go grab a min center *gulp*... that one is depressing. Biyombo time finally?

 

Nope. Can assume we were waiting on Klay to decide.

 

EL SEGUNDO, Calif. — As the Los Angeles Lakers introduced their future to the world, their present stood in the shadows behind the throng of media members and TV cameras.

During a news conference for Dalton Knecht and Bronny James — the team’s two 2024 draft picks — Bronny’s father, LeBron, watched from the sidelines instead of sitting in the friends-and-family section of the front row alongside his wife, Savannah, and Klutch Sports CEO Rich Paul

ADVERTISEMENT

The message was clear: The moment was about Bronny, not LeBron.

Even so, Bronny, in his first media availability since being drafted by the Lakers with the No. 55 pick last week, inevitably faced an onslaught of questions regarding playing with his father and for the Lakers.

“For sure, amplified amount of pressure,” Bronny said. “I’ve already seen it on social media and stuff, and the internet and stuff and talking about that I might not deserve an opportunity. But I’ve been dealing with stuff like this my whole life. So it’s nothing different. But it’s more amplified, for sure. But I’ll get through it.”

After Bronny thanked new head coach JJ Redick and vice president of basketball operations and general manager Rob Pelinka for everything they have “given” to him, Redick stepped in to correct his 19-year-old rookie guard.

“Rob and I did not give Bronny anything. Bronny has earned this, right?” Redick said. “Bronny talks about his hard work. Bronny has earned this through hard work. And for us prioritizing player development, we view Bronny as, like, case study one, because his base level of feel, athleticism, point-of-attack defender, shooting, passing … there’s a lot to like about his game. And as we sort of build out our player development program holistically, he’s going to have a great opportunity to become an excellent NBA player.”



Redick said the organization is close to hiring a director of player development to oversee areas beyond just the technical elements of the game: nutrition, weight training, conditioning, recovery and mental health.

The Lakers will play their first summer league game Saturday at the California Classic in San Francisco. Both Knecht, the No. 17 pick, and Bronny are expected to play in the summer leagues in San Francisco and Las Vegas. Redick will not coach the team in either league but said he will be heavily involved in practices and games. South Bay Lakers coach Dane Johnson and his staff will coach the team.

ADVERTISEMENT

With all of the talk about the future of the franchise on Tuesday, it was difficult to ignore LeBron’s looming presence.

It’s no secret that he and Anthony Davis both want significant improvements to the Lakers’ roster. According to Paul, LeBron was even willing to take a sizable pay cut to help facilitate a worthwhile nontaxpayer midlevel exception signing. But that hasn’t happened, and James ultimately agreed to a two-year maximum contract with a second-year player option and a no-trade clause, according to The Athletic’s Shams Charania.

With each passing hour and each transaction elsewhere, upgrading the Lakers’ roster becomes slightly more challenging.

Over the past couple of weeks, the Lakers have acted more like a franchise concerned with their future than their present. “Player development” and “program” have been buzzwords in news conferences. Their only two additions have been rookies. That could certainly be explained by the context of the media availabilities and the time of the year — the draft was just last week, of course — but the Lakers haven’t exactly come off as an urgent group desperate to go all-in for this season.

Through three days of free agency — and really, dating back to last Wednesday, when they finally had access to three tradable draft picks — the Lakers have made no moves of consequence outside of re-signing Max Christie to a four-year, $32 million deal. And with summer league only a few days away, they’ve yet to hire an assistant coaching staff around Redick.

It hasn’t been for a lack of trying. The Lakers aggressively pursued Klay Thompson, but Thompson turned down their offer of more years and money from the Lakers to join the Dallas Mavericks, according to league sources. They’ve now turned their attention to DeMar DeRozan, though the Miami Heat are currently viewed as slight favorites to land the 15-year veteran and six-time All-Star, according to league sources.


GO DEEPER

The Lakers have been quiet so far in free agency. Could DeMar DeRozan change that?

The Lakers have been active in their conversations on the trade market, too. As The Athletic reported earlier on Tuesday, the Lakers have had recent trade talks with Portland, Brooklyn and Utah, among other teams.

“I think we’re gonna always be aggressive to try to make roster upgrades and will be relentless to continue to look at what we can do,” Pelinka said. “This is the season of being mindful of all the different things we can approach to improve the roster. So we’re in the midst of that as we speak. That will continue in the coming days, and it often spills into Vegas, where all the GMs meet and gather, and other deals get done. But we’ll stay aggressive.”

ADVERTISEMENT

Regardless of how aggressive they’ve been, though, at some point, the results matter. At this point, they’ve fallen short. There is still time to land an impactful free agent or make a ceiling-raising trade. But the longer this all drags, the trickier it becomes.

The Lakers have a few avenues to acquire new talent. If Los Angeles opts to sign a player to a nontaxpayer midlevel exception or minimum contract, it would have to make a trade to create a roster spot or execute a sign-and-trade while sending a player back. The Lakers could also trade for a player or players under contract with another team, so long as they send out an equal or greater number of players in the deal.

With LeBron James re-signing, the roster is at 15 players — the league maximum. And if LeBron takes his maximum, the Lakers will have $190 million in guaranteed salary and be $1.1 million over the $188.9 million second apron. That would mean the team must execute a salary dump to shed at least $1.1 million before they officially re-sign LeBron and Christie.

While some teams appeared likely to take steps back, such as the Denver Nuggets, LA Clippers and Golden State Warriors, several are poised for steps forward, including the Oklahoma City Thunder, Minnesota Timberwolves, Dallas Mavericks, New Orleans Pelicans, Memphis Grizzlies and Houston Rockets.

In contrast, the Lakers, as things stand, project as a lower-seeded playoff or Play-In team. James and Davis have believed for years that they’ve just needed to get in to have a chance for a title. While that still may be true, they also want more firepower surrounding them.

When asked if the Lakers are being patient with their draft assets and potentially waiting until the February 2025 trade deadline to use them, Pelinka said the Lakers will strike if the right opportunity presents itself.

ADVERTISEMENT

“I think if the right deal comes and we have to put in draft picks, we will,” Pelinka said. “We’re now in the apron world. We’ve seen contending teams or championship-level teams have to lose players. That’s a result of the apron world we’re living in. So, does it make trades more challenging? Yes. Does it make good trades impossible? No.”


GO DEEPER

Hollinger: NBA's apron era marks end of exceptionalism + free-agency winners, losers

The Lakers’ present and future conflict, to some extent. Prioritizing one inevitably affects the other. Trading picks means a more difficult rebuild in the eventual post-LeBron era. Keeping them almost certainly shuts the door on contending for another title. The coming days and weeks will reveal which period the franchise values more.

(Photo of Bronny James: Ronald Martinez / Getty Images)

 

while i agree that the three-star model is basically untenable, i still was hoping we'd go after lavine. i feel like if you don't have to give up the draft picks, it's ok. and yes, you'd be stuck if lavine was a failure, but maybe this is really our last shot with lebron anyway.

and it sounds like we're just going to try to shuffle our minimums around for something. guessing we'll call on nick richards for hayes/reddish, something small like that.

 

i've said this a couple times, but i just don't think lebron was willing to give up 20 million dollars just to sign valanciunas. it's clear to me that lebron was willing to give up about half that if we could make a S&T work. new orleans has its own luxury tax issues to work with, so S&Ting JV for gabe or vando really doesn't make sense for them. for valanciunas to walk into our MLE, we'd have needed to get salary commitments down to 170, post mle signing. that's 20 million off lebron OR moving dlo and a minimum into cap space, which requires draft picks and needed to happen at a time when teams with that much space might still have been hoping to use it otherwise.

wasn't happening.

edit: btw--in december, washington will still suck, and maybe you can have valanciunas for gabe at that point if you still want him.

 

How many more wins we get from Dinwiddie and Grant vs DLo and Rui?

Klay did agree later than Valanciunas, the day after actually. So we were probably still in plan A. And we tried dump DLo or a S&T but it wasn't possible, hence the "new apron world" comments. We just didn't had any flexibility and relied on other teams and players to create that flexibility for us

 

yeah, that's a move to make a move.

rui/vando/reddish for grant whilst retaining dlo is something that makes more sense.

my main gripe about the offseason so far--DO NOT TELL ANTHONY IRWIN ABOUT THIS--is that dallas moved thj and seconds to detroit for quentin grimes, creating the exception they needed for klay. if i'm lebron right now, i'm asking rob where the hell he was on that one? dlo is better than thj. again, i think that was maybe dennis lindsey doing dallas a favor on his way out the door to detroit, but man...that was the difference.

we clearly want out of the dlo game, and a move like that was possible, and we missed it.

 

That's tough to correlate player to x win total because we lost regular season games cause of Ham, not Rui and DLO.

But come playoff time, we reached a point where both were either a liability or unplayable (for the latter he's reached that point every post season run he's had in his career). Not saying we were beating Denver with that alignment because they were crushing us no matter what. But you still want to try to give yourself the best chance for post season success.

Having players who are lineup proof are invaluable. And the Austin/DLO pairing isn't ideal defensively.

 

But if that's the case, a more savvy exec flips that script and puts it back on Bron to actually make good on the paycut. Say you can't put a name out there and then go back on it.

Probably right about December. They have Holmes and Sarr too, that can get clunky on a bad team. I'm guessing they promised Jonas the starting spot and that's why he took a hair less than the full MLE. They'll go with Sarr at PF until he fills out. Definitely worth monitoring.

 

Because this organization is run by f***ing idiots.

 

Did they not even think about Tobias Harris? I don't get what they are trying to do. If you got an inside track on Harris with MLE that makes it a lot easier to move Rui/Dlo.

Things change quickly in the NBA but organization seems to have decided to go the playin/playoff route to keep money in the seats till AD contract is up.

 

Tobias got 2 years/$52M. That wasn’t an option.

 

Maybe. BUT... 6th last year won't be a 6th this year


West is better either with health or acquisitions. Even the teams that got worse this summer are actively retooling and will be competing. Blazers are the only bad team and it's TBD about the Jazz.

We had great top end health that won't be replicated. Just look at these top 6 in terms of games played:

 

i like grant because he's a two-way player, which is why i'd give rui and vando for him despite my vando love. those two are one-way players.

aw c'mon, jsm--how do you think lebron and rich paul react to that?!

also, he never said he'd take the full paycut. again, this was a tactic to try to get the FO to use picks to dump dlo or rui or gabe or whatever.

i'm sure we'd promise the starting role, too, but i think it was timing. he saw 30 million guaranteed and jumped on it, probably figuring he'll be playing elsewhere come spring anyway.

i'm not going to repeat my mle explainer, but i will add that tobias harris signed for twice that.

 

that's my big concern. we had good health from our stars and squandered it with some very poor roster decisions early. i do think that gabe and vando missing the whole year has been poopoo-ed a bit, though. vando is what made playing dlo/reaves together possible, imo. gabe is what makes benching dlo for defensive purposes possible. both things were off the table basically all season long.

 

Grant is a good move. I would try to keep Dlo - I know he's a snowflake in the playoffs but he's gives you a lot of good minutes and you need guys to get you through the grind of the regular season.

Need a little luck in the playoffs but Grant gives you a two way wing which you didn't have last year to matchup with guys like MPJ/Gordon, Luka, etc. Maybe Knecht has a ROY of the year and you can have a GS 22 run where they weren't the best team but they cards fell there way.

 

i have a hard time believing lebron would've taken a paycut for valanciunas. a guy who the lakers played off the court in a must win game

i think klay was the only one he was willing to take a paycut for. derozan probably too, but he likely wanted more than what the lakers were offering