2026-27 Team Developments: Trades / Free Agents / News / Rumors / Ideas

This is noteworthy. With Sexton officially signed using the room exception, we now are essentially locked into the pathway where any other roster addition is going to have to be via trade or veteran's minimum. The pathway of stretching someone's contract (or trading to dump salary) in order to clear more cap room to make another signing is now impossible. It was already starting to look that way, but now it's pretty much locked in.

I was going to try to do the math on if stretching Vando could have cleared enough cap room to make a viable RFA offer for Spencer Jones but now that's out the window

Wouldn't be surprised if we see Austin officially ink his new deal soon now too

 

Stretch could also be done to get under the 1st apron if needed, but also unlikely. The stretch is not really preferable anyway, but a good tool to use if necessary. I wonder if this means the Lakers are confident they could trade Vando? Maybe they already have a deal in place?

 

Looney probably soon too.

 

Spencer Jones insurance. The easiest way for us to get Jones was via a RFA offer where we traded Dalton into cap space and made the offer.

It allowed the Nuggets to not take any money back because they’d in cap trouble.

I believe signing Sexton and Reaves closes the door on Jones unfortunately.

 

Reported info from Stein and Fischer:

- ⁠Lakers doesn’t seem very aggressive trying to trade Vanderbilt’s contract
- Lakers have 1 open spot left and may start the season that way (as in their summer is done)
- ⁠Re: Kuminga, supposedly has other options to pivot to, which includes not ruling out a return to Atlanta
Re: PJ Washington, despite being made available by Dallas (along with Gafford and Klay) Lakers do not like his 4-year contract

Understandable about Kuminga, but disappointing about reports that we don’t want PJ even though he is available. If we stand pat, that would be disappointing because we have real holes in the team as of now:

Luka / Sexton / Bronny
Reaves / Carr / Hardy
Grimes / Adou / Knecht
Jake / Vando
Kessler / Mamu / Looney

 

Yeah the starting 4 spot, for me, is the difference between this offseason being overall a little disappointing and it being good. Like it swings a C+ to a B+/A-. Which is think is perfectly rational, given that we're talking about having a starting caliber forward and not having one.

If it's true that we're just not interested in PJ, that is mind-boggling to me. I thought the whole point of optionality for this summer was finding long-term pieces. A long-term wing pieces that pretty obviously fits well is potentially available, but we're not interested because his contract is too long? That makes no sense to me.

I am going to lose it if I have to start another season with a handful of folks clamoring for Vando to play more yet again because our wings are so bad.

 

Maybe a little hopeful, but perhaps Dalton and a second is still enough for Jones. If you start him at $8M maybe that’s high enough that the luxury tax savings of instead converting that to Knecht’s $4M and a second rounder makes sense for Denver.

Or a three team trade that dumps Knecht elsewhere. I’m pretty sure that’s still possible right? A three team trade that also involves a sign-and-trade component to it?

 

Jones reports his offseason on Linked In. He said that his agent and him were asking for 4m from Denver to resign. His recent update basically said that he was sure he’d be playing elsewhere this season. So we know he’s going to be cheap and Denver probably can’t afford him.

The issue with Denver is, if they resign Watson without getting rid of anyone, they’ll be about 20-25m above the second apron. At that point, Spencer Jones’ 4m salary could cost them an additional 25-30m in taxes alone. I imagine that’s why they signed Alpha Diallo. They’ll be forced to either trade Watson or one of Braun or Cam Johnson, as their ownership doesn’t want to be a second apron team (no one does really).

And yes, we could do a 3 team trade, where we dump a guy somewhere with draft capital and then give additional draft capital to take on Spencer Jones. I wasn’t a fan of that because I don’t think we needed to send out two seconds, we could have just dumped Knecht for one and made an offer outright to Spencer.

Maybe when Denver trades one of Watson, Braun or Cam Johnson, we can be apart of that and nab Jones instead.

But I do feel our team isn’t being aggressive. They may just be saving their assets for the trade deadline instead now.

 

I hope we’ve quietly pivoted to Watson or another wing target in a trade. Even a Saadiq Bey would be a great option at this point.

 

Still refuse to believe we’re just done as is.

 

It seems Atlanta may want to pivot towards Watson in a S&T. They'd have a really interesting core of Flemings, NAW, Daniels, Watson, Johnson, Okongwu & Ejifor. It's a shame that Rishacher looks like a bust - getting a #1 pick and him being terrible is so disheartening for a franchise.

I think if Atlanta go for Watson, that could spell bad news for us in our pursuit of Kuminga as well. They won't have the cap space to take on Vando and Denver definitely won't want to take on salary being at the 2nd Apron.