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

love getting huff on the exhibit 10 for now. he gets to camp, and by then we'll have more roster clarity. we probably promised him an audition in the preseason so he can catch on elsewhere if he shows out but we've already picked up turner (doubtful).

imo, he's light years ahead of our two-ways (swider, pippen) right now, so we can always dump one of them to get him in that spot, too.

i assume harris here is tim harris and not joe harris? what was harris's issue prior? i may have missed the update.

anyway, i still think all the other stuff is window dressing/positioning (and worth doing, btw) until the kyrie situation looks resolved on both ends.

as mitchell and durant move, the picture will become clearer, and we could end up holding the bag or in the catbird seat (to mix past-century metaphors) depending on some of that.

 

I have a feeling our most realistic shot at getting rid of Westbrook is a 3 team trade with the Nets/Pacers.

It’s not a bad deal for all sides either. The salaries actually work out that the trade can be completed this way:

Lakers get Kyrie, Hield
Pacers get Westbrook+2029 first
Nets get Nunn+2027 first

The Pacers salary dump Hield’s long term contract and get a first.

The Nets will save a TON of money by only taking back Nunn’s $6 million. They will basically only be $1 million above the luxury tax, so not only do they save on not having to buyout Westbrook or Kyrie, they also save $90 million on luxury taxes….. AND they get a pick for their financial/player mismanagement.

Lakers get their starting backcourt of Kyrie/Hield. My preference would be if we got Turner instead of Hield for Westbrook+pick, but for some reason I think we would have to give up more (ie THT, multiple 2nds) because Turners a better player on a expiring contract. But boy, if there was a way to substitute Turner instead of Hield by giving Indiana multiple 2nds in addition to their 2029 first.

The Lakers would also keep THT in all instances, because Indiana had the cap space to absorb a lot of Westbrook’s salary, we would only need to ship out Nunn to make the salaries work.

I mean, this team can compete with anybody:

Kyrie/Reaves/Schroder for the minimum
THT/Walker/Jones
Lebron/JTA/Johnson
AD/Gabriel
Turner/Bryant/Jones

Rob would have definitely redeemed himself if he can pull this off

 

AHEMMM

 

A $20m expiring shooter has value. A nearly $50m expiring who the team will buy out before the plane lands has much less value. In one case you're trading for a player you're going to use and the other, you're trading for upcoming cap space to wipe away a mistake(s). Most playoff teams would be willing to take on rental for a shooter, especially if they're not having to sacrifice anything. Probably only a handful would be in a financial position to take him on whether it's into cap space, for an existing trade X, or for partially - non guaranteed players. But there would be a market for his services.

To me the Indy play is all about Turner. For me, Hield is a throw in and helps this season cause Swider is our current best shooter and you can't make the playoffs that way. [Dated reference alert] You're walking through Blockbuster, you've wasted an hour looking at every movie there. Nothing is new. Nothing looks good. But you've wasted a significant part of your night. You can't go home empty handed. You grab that one you've walked by a dozen times and have thought "ehhh" every time. You settle. That's Hield. I know Rob sees it flipped, but that's OK. 82 games of Hield hopefully satisfies that itch and then hopefully we can move on from this madness.

Maybe only a couple people here are higher than I am on the pairing of AD and Turner. It's the best frontcourt match in the NBA and it's not close. That's a current and long term solution to success. Sure there's injury issues with both of them and that could make it all crumble but if there weren't those concerns, his tag is at least 3 firsts and a pick swap or asset. Same reason we're able to be in the conversation for Kyrie. There's risks, you buy low and wait for the returns.

That's why I don't give a s*** about dumping Hield a year after getting him. If you were to tell me that you can get Turner and Kyrie here by next summer for sofa pizza and two first round picks, you hail Rob as the best GM in the NBA. I don't think this play is likely but it's another path and while we wait for training camp to get closer and for some sort of movement, all we've got is time and no real news to go off of, might as well get as creative as possible to stave off any bleak thoughts of Russ ever playing here again.

As far as the $, if you get close to $75m before pawning off Hield, that move would get you close-ish to $95m. I figured we could get Turner locked in around $25m, Kyrie for $40m, and that leaves $30m for Bron. It's nowhere near his max he'd want, but his LA endeavors more than makeup the difference. What's the price he's willing to leave on the table for the sake of the team? Just how much does he want to play with Kyrie?

Just a thought exercise to pass the time. We've seen much wilder written about by "professionals" this summer. Here's one I thought was worth kicking the tires on that I hadn't seen.

 

Correct. Most of LAL's business ops roll up under him. This type of work used to be run by Howard until recently but after her departure Harris is overseeing it more directly.

No issue prior, he just issued a directive to stop the promotional work after BKN pulled out of the deal.

 

I like the plan, but I only see LeBron taking less when it comes time to play alongside his son. I could be wrong. I never thought Beerdo McFloppington would take less, but he did.

 

i won't rehash the hield argument, but i disagree. the pacers can't get a 1st for him now (unless the deal is larger with other parts like indy taking on future salary), and we'd need draft capital to get a team to take him into space next summer.

as for the cap plan: your assumption was a 131 million dollar cap, right? AD makes 40.5 next year. you already don't have 95 million. then there's cap holds for the other 11 spots (more complicated than that but i'm going with the most extreme case). that's at least another 11 million (rookie minimum salary is the hold), i think (but probably significantly more if you plan to keep ANY of the cheaper guys you want). so 79 million is the absolute maximum you have to split among kyrie, lebron, and myles turner. kyrie's whole issue with bkn is them not wanting to pay him his absolute max, so signing for less seems unlikely. his max is around 40, right? so there's 40 left for turner and lebron. turner's young and injury-prone. if he's healthy, he's going to want to cash in. 20's the minimum for him, and i'm guessing he'll be after more (and a few more teams have space next year). so the max lebron can get is 20 (a 60% pay cut) and it could be as little as 10-15, very easily.

i don't see lebron taking that size of a pay cut (not even dirk and duncan's were that large, relative to previous salary, and lebron isn't dirk/duncan).

and then it's those 4 guys (1 old, three injury-prone) and vet mins. so even in the unlikely event it works, you're kind of where we are currently. i'd rather start building a team that isn't turned over completely every single year. the best teams return large portions of their roster. the level of roster churn we have is indicative of a bad basketball team and produces further bad basketball teams.

 

But we have bird rights on LeBron no? We should be able to re-sign with him over the cap

That's my basic knowledge of cap space. You go over the cap if you have bird rights. We would probably need to sign him after any FA

 

not how it works. every player has a cap hold even if you're under the cap. lebron counts against our cap at 50 million +. you have to renounce his hold to use that money, which means you renounce his bird rights.

now, holds are a function of current salary and possible future salary in some cases. so austin reaves's cap hold will be very little next year, but if we operate over the cap, we can sign him for much more after we've used whatever space we'll use.

in short, cap space plans suck. the best use of bird rights is for teams over the cap, and bird rights are how you circumvent the cap and gain a competitive advantage (see: the clippers and warriors).

 

On Reaves, I was under the impression we won’t have his full bird rights yet when he’s a free agent next summer, since he’d only have played two years with us? So we’d still be restricted to either having to use cap space to re-sign him, give him a minor raise via early bird rights, or use BAE/MLE on him.

Am I mistaken? It’s been a worry of mine that we won’t be able to retain Reaves if he makes a big jump in his sophomore year.

 

Ahhh yes, forgot the cap hold. That makes it difficult then

 

Yeah, I am optimistic!!!

 

we'll have early bird rights, including the gilbert arenas provision.

basically the same situation as THT. if he breaks out, teams can offer a big deal, but it would have to be structured weirdly and in a way that we could match it if we wanted to.

we'll have early bird on nunn after next year, too (not an arenas situation, though).

not sure how much this matters, though, as we let caruso walk when we had his full bird rights. because we're cheap and dumb.

 

I agree Kyrie doesn't get you there, but my current view is that if you could swing him for one pick (and that is a BIG if), it puts you in a good position to build a championship roster. AD + Kyrie is a good core for the next few years and an enticing one for free agents, especially when you still have the remaining FRP you can use to get some defense at the wing. Using two FRPs on Kyrie though doesn't leave you enough to work with.

 

If Durant and Westbrook ended up on the same team again I'd watch that

 

https://bleacherreport.com/articles...ussell-westbrook-insider-opinions-vary-widely

i know this is boring by now, but it's interesting to see that league sources essentially have the exact same debates we do.


the context missing from all discussions of the picks:

always my point. with top-10 protection, i'd trade pretty much all future picks for any current impact player, pretty much any time. non-top 10 picks just aren't that valuable. but unprotected picks can be quite valuable and quite devastating for bad teams to have given up.

further points:

i promise i'm not an nba executive:

no, really, this isn't me:

still think a conley-based utah deal is the best of all worlds. we should be able to keep one pick in any utah deal, and there are lots of possibilities depending on who comes with conley.