LeBron James Discussion: Not Returning To The Lakers

1st time you thought of that eventuality Battle?

 

Continuing in the more appropriate thread here, from an earlier discussion with Doc in the Kuz thread, in terms of Randle, I think a S&T is possible if he wants to get paid by a capped out team. Bron and CP3 are boys. I’m sure Bron will take a page out of what CP3 did this summer and say that if you don’t trade me to LA, I will just opt out and walk to the Lakers. Then Gilbert will look at his roster and know that even if you take Bron’s player opted in 35M off the books, they’re still hovering around 105M in total team salary next year, so they won’t have anything to improve their team other than the non-tax MLE. Why not get something instead of getting nothing again with a Bron exodus. And if they play it right and also pray that Shump opts out of his contract, they will avoid being a tax paying team. Maybe a S&T Randle is something they would be interested in. Also with a S&T Randle to the Cavs, Gilbert has a built in excuse to not spend more money cause the Cavs will be hard capped at the apron….and again, that means no luxury taxes. Randle gets his extension also and doesn’t have the risk of waiting a year to prove that he can get paid as a UFA. Its particularly risky due to his injury plagued history as a young player. Another intangible is that we probably will have the support of Randle’s agent since, he also represents George, who will be eager to finally get to LA.

Then LA gets Bron’s bird rights in a trade. Recall that the Cavs initially brought back Lebron on a 1+1 deal, where Bron opted out of the 2nd year and signed his current 3 year deal as an early-Bird candidate. That’s possibly what we do with PG13 to gain his early bird rights to give him more money in 2019 after he opts out of his 1+1 deal next summer. So with both Bron’s and Lopez’s bird rights in a trade, we have that much more flexibility in circumventing any cap restraints.

Also I misspoke (mistyped) on the exceptions that are available if we extend Lopez to bust through the cap apron (125-130M). I meant to say that we will have the non-tax payer MLE (8.7M) if we do NOT break through the apron. If we do then the amount is 5.4M for tax payer mid-level exception once we break and go beyond the cap apron. We got no chance at using the room mid level, cause I’m sure we’ll use up all our cap to bring in Bron, PG and extend Lopez.

Lastly, I’m reading that some don’t want Bron cause he’ll be the pseudo GM once he gets here and ship out Ball and Ingram. Let’s nip this at the bud right now. Of course we will treat Bron like a star player and run our important decisions by him…as we should. Jim and Mitch should have done the same with Kobe too so that he wouldn’t get so frustrated where he demanded a trade to Pluto. Either way, if Bron gets his way, wasn’t he losing his ish last season in asking for the Cavs to bring in a PG. Now seeing what Zo has done so far, wouldn’t a PG like Zo absolutely appease Bron if he still had those desires to play with a prototypical PG (and not scoring guards like Irving and most recently flirting with DRose). Also, with the Cavs, Irving was a young’n so to be in win-now mode, they almost had to trade the rookie Wiggins for a vet like Love. If Bron comes here with his buddie PG13 and Lopez already on the books, we won’t have that problem and we’ll have the perfect blend of kids and chaperons on our roster. The final thing is that Bron is dealing with Magic and indirectly Kobe via Pelinka if he’s here. He’ll be a good soldier and stay in his lane…otherwise we just might unleash Lavar on him.

Btw, sorry I couldn’t get to this last night.

 

Prepare for the KING, he's coming y'all.

 

Bill Simmons keeps on hoping that Lebron will leave the East to pave the way for his C Bags. spewing fake news

 

Would signing Lopez early for a small deal clear his cap hold?

 

Ya if PG is locked in for LA too, it def helps landing lebron. I still think his chances of getting to the finals are better in the east.

 

Yeah its all about the order in how you extend, sign free agents and trade for them cause all of it is predicated on a verbal agreement that players and agents can back out from. I just don't see that happening in this case cause all 3 principles (Lopez, George, Bron) want to be here. Lopez and George are Cali guys, while Bron's wife has a huge say in the matter like JSJ pointed out.

George is essentially coming on board like Durant did with GSW last summer. Through a 1+1 deal, where he will opt out of the 2nd year and then the Lakers can use his early bird rights to offer him more money. Its the same blueprint Bron did with the Cavs. In terms of Durant, his GSW contract was 26.5M in year 1 and 27.7M in the player optioned 2nd year, which he opted out of. He signed a 2 year 54M deal this summer, which he will opt out of the 2nd year next summer and then the Warriors can offer way more money to Durant since he would be an early bird candidate (having played 2 years for them). If you look at George, we just might do the same thing with him. George isn't a regular season and Finals MVP, so using that as the standard and knowing George wants to form a tandem with someone to compete for a title, I don't see George's Laker year 1 contract exceeding 25M.

Lopez is making 22M this year, so his cap hold of 34M is due to his potential of earning a max deal as a 10+ year player. However, we can start as low as 105% of his last year of his previous contract (which is 105% of 22M = 23.1M). You take both Lopez and George and I'm anticipating we need roughly 50M in cap for that. Lets say we stand pat. The Lakers will have roughly 50M in salary with KCP having a 21.6M cap hold and Julius having a 5.6M cap hold. We obviously renounce KCP and keep Randle's 5.6M cap hold on the books.

Now think of what the Spurs did with LMA and Kawhi. Kawhi's cap hold was roughly 7.6M. They brought in LMA as a free agent at around 19.7M and then they extended Kawhi at 16.5M. That small cap hold amount allowed them to do that, so I'm thinking this also allows us to circumvent stricter cap restrictions with Randle's small cap hold.

So going back to the Lakers 2018 cap numbers. We'll have roughly 55M in committed cap if we renounce KCP and keep Randle's cap hold. We then give Lopez his extension (23M). That puts us at just under 80M. We sign George to 1+1 deal with year 1 being in the ball park of 25M (similar to KD this last summer). This puts us right around the cap. Then we trade to Bron using any combination of Clarkson, Deng and/or a resigned Randle and in the process we retain Bron's bird rights. He opts in to his 35M option and come 2019, we revisit George and Bron with their new extensions.

In this manner we also won't hit the cap apron and we keep our non-tax payers MLE...but I have to check to see if that gets taken away if we use a S&T with Randle.

So some salary sacrificing obviously has to be done if we also want to retain KCP to the group. However, if we go about doing a Lebron trade or a Paul George trade (recall he too has a player option for a final year amount of 20.7M), then the Lakers could go about earning a traded players exemption as well. I have to check if you can fit a free agent like KCP into an exemption like that. Too many new nuances to the new CBA that have no idea, as of yet, in how they work.

 

they already opened his pizza franchise inside Staples

 

It's been there for a while. But yes, more smoke.

 

You don't get a tax payer or non-tax payer MLE AND get to use cap space. It's one or the other. It's either operate as a team under the cap or over the cap.

- Use cap space to sign LBJ/PG/Lopez --> No MLE THIS season if you go over the cap to do it, but you would get it the following season because we would be for sure capped out.

When Teams are Subjected to the Hard Cap:

Unsurprisingly, the actions that trigger the hard cap are the things that below the tax teams can do but taxpayers (more specifically, teams over the “apron”) cannot:

• Acquiring a player via sign-and-trade
• Using the Bi-Annual Exception
• Signing a player using the Mid-Level Exception for more than allowed under the Taxpayer Mid-Level Exception

What Happens When a Team is Hard Capped:

If a team does one of the above three things, they cannot have a team salary above the “apron” which is always exactly $4 million above the luxury tax line at any point during the remainder that league year (which turns over July 1). Unlike the soft cap, these teams cannot exceed this line for any reason even if they have exceptions or hardship. The league will reject any move that could potentially take them over the line.

- The scenario that I think you are trying to get at is something similar to the Rockets employed to get CP3. I'll break it down....

- Use open cap space to resign Lopez/PG.....We'll use the scenario we dumped Deng to have max cap space
- Let's just assume we signed those three with JC and Randle's cap hold still on the roster and still have some cap space left over (This isn't about what the players are actually worth and it wouldn't fit trying to sign all of them, it's just an example to fill in cap space to illustrate point)
- Assume we have a little bit of cap space left after signing players
- Sign and trade Randle + Clarkson for Lebron who opts into 35 million dollar deal which would be really close to his 1st year number if he signed in FA
- Puts at hard cap of 125-130 that we cannot go over since we are hard capped with the sign and trade
- We don't get the MLE because we were under the cap to start
- We get Lopez back without just opening up a ton of cap space to sign them all under the cap

And for those that want a more visual representation........

Lonzo (7.5)
Ingram (5.8)
Nance (2.3)
Kuzma (1.7)
Hart (1.7)
Zu (1.5)
Bryant (1)
Clarkson (12.5)
Randle (12.4)
+2 cap holds (1.6)
Lopez bird right's cap hold - 34 million

Total - 82 million

- Resign Lopez - 15 million (Drops off 34 million dollar cap hold)
- Resign KCP or Wade - 10 million (Renounce his cap hold and resign with cap space)
- Players above + 1 cap hold

Total - 72.2 million

- Sign PG in FA - 32 million
- Players above + no cap holds - 71.4 million

Total - 103.4 million

- Sign and Trade Randle + Clarkson for Lebron (Opts into 35.6 million dollar deal) - 35.6
- Players above + no cap holds - 103.4

Final roster

Lonzo (7.5) Hart (1.7)
Ingram (5.8) / KCP or Wade (10)
PG (32) / Kuzma (1.7)
Lebron (35.6) / Nance (2.3)
Lopez (15) / Zu (1.5) / Bryant (1)

+ 1 cap hold

Final total - 115.1 million

- Next season make good on KCP or Wade and give them a deal
- Get to use probably tax payer MLE after resigning LBJ and going over the cap

Ready to compete and win titles in 2 years with loaded roster

 

This is about title 18. Not Kobe or Magic or any individual player in Lakers history. I want title 18 and I want title 18 hung off the faces of the Boston C Bags. If it takes Lebron coming here to do it? So be it.

Lakers 4 Life above anything and anyone in the NBA.

 

Was the Summer League championship #17?