2025-26 Team Developments: Trades / Free Agents / News / Rumors / Ideas

But you need to understand Hayes is Lukas Buddy on and off the court. Jaxon's cap hold is 6.5 million. He will get at least that. I mean around 7-9 would be a fair amount for a good back up center. That's around what Jaelen Smith, Lopez, Capela, Bitadze, Looney, Jackson, and Ayton are getting.

 

DFS was his buddy on and off the court too. This is a business at the end of the day, everyone knows what it is. We aren’t trading Luka’s kids away here. If Hayes doesnt want to stick around for 6m, he can go to all the other suitors that are willing to pay him double. I’m sure he’ll find there aren’t any.

Hayes is a 7/4 career backup that hasn’t averaged more than 20 mins a game and isn’t so useful in the playoffs. You don’t pay 8% of the cap for that.

 

Agreed.
If he wants to smoke week and drink- just hire a driver!!!
What a fool.

 

Different situation though. Hayes fills an important need on a Luka team. He's a lob-catching big and is one of the few bright spots this season. 7-9 million per year is fair for him. Yeah, 10-12 may be a little rich for him, but we do need to stock up on lob-catching/rim-protecring big. We had a surplus of power forward shooter types, and a need for a big, so Lakers chose to sign Ayton over DFS.

 

Dude first of all calm down. You have no idea the context of my voice when I was saying that or how I was saying that. It wasn’t like the Cop was wrong. It was like Cops damn the cops.

Of course you arrest his a** for a dui. I said why don’t these guys have drivers driving them when they are drunk? I clearly state that.

nothing right about what Dillon Brooks did. I was saying what happened to your hand? Obviously the guy broke his hand.

and I was asking if it was Legal in Arizona cause I know it wasn’t Legal in Nevada even though they have dispensaries.

Do not under any circumstances think I’m condoning that.

 

Luka clearly plays better without Lebron. Lebron isn’t a problem it’s the fact that Luka can’t think and just goes to let me differ to him and facilitate. Unfortunately you don’t want Luka being Magic even though I stated it would help. He has to be Kobe he has to be aggressive. And the only way he’s effective is putting 44 points on teams. He can’t impact a game not shooting like Chris Paul.

he has to be aggressive. Lebron has to play that Draymond Green. Pick and roll. Pick and pop Karl Malone.


Reddick has to Chanel Tyron Lue and let Luka be Kyrie. He dictates everything. Lebron needs to play that Cleveland role come off screens facilitate play defense block shots. Adjust be the most devastating athletic elite power forward in the league. Use your body push tempo. Make the shot when it’s there.

Austin Needs to come off the bench or start and Lebron needs to come off the bench. Enough is enough I’m not play cating to egoes. I’m trying to win a championship.

Luka has to be playing with active moving players. We can’t have Lebron and Reaves and Luka on the court at the same time.

LeBron can help but he’s gotta change his game. Luka cannot figure out how to get these guys involved. I just want Luka trying to score. So as follows.

Luka should be playing with Kennard. Honestly at this point. I would just start.

Luka
Kennard
Vando
James
Hayes


Bench

Reaves
Smart
Hachimura
LaRavia
Ayton.

 

Figure it out!!!!!!!!

 

The thought of bringing Austin and Rui off the bench? Boy...you'll start a riot around here Tony Hawk!!!



Ironically.. the previous HC thought of that blasphemy..while trying to figure out, how to get the most out of Tinkerbell!! It got ugly around these parts!!

 

Sharing this from the Tony Bennett thread, since I think it's also relevant for the discussion here.

I've been thinking about this a lot the past several days and have been looking more closely into this year's projected Mid-to-Late First Round players- and I think there's a potential path here for the Lakers to get creative and be a bit aggressive in the draft this year.

As previously discussed, there's several potential Centers in that range who could be smart pickups for the Lakers to pursue, most notably Motiejus Krivas and Aday Mara IMO. And while Krivas is very clearly the more immediately "NBA ready" player of the two, I do think Mara could still be a good get for the Lakers long term and would work fine if we do "Center by Committee" for the first couple of seasons.

More importantly though is the three-headed dragon of a frontcourt that Mara is a part of at Michigan this year, alongside combo forward Yaxel Lendeborg and forward-center Morez Johnson Jr. I think there's a way for the Lakers to at least get one more First for this year's draft class on Draft Night, maybe two if we're really lucky, and walk out of the First Round Draft Night with one of either Krivas or Mara and either Yaxel or Morez, as the Lakers' long term starting frontcourt to pair up alongside Luka and Austin.

Notably if the Lakers were able to draft Krivas and Morez, that duo would be monstrous. Reminiscent a bit IMO of playing AD at the 4 and Dwight+McGee at the 5 during the Bubble Ring run in 2020.

Essentially, what we could do on Draft Night is agree to a trade with Denver to take on Cam Johnson's contract into our cap space to enable them to resign Peyton Watson unperturbed, in exchange for their '26 First pick. That way, we'd be able to draft two potential longterm frontcourt pieces, have Cam as a bench piece and still have plenty of cap space left over to go do a S&T with Houston for Tari Eason after the fact.

 

LeBron is not playing.
Now I am less worried about result

 

Good, even with the “they haven’t played enough minutes together” excuse, LeBron, Luka and AR just don’t fit.

 

i like lendeborg as a play-right-now guy at the big forward spot, but i don't think he'll fall to us. i'm guessing at least one of krivas/aday/johnson will be there, along with potentially some athletic wing types. no reason not to get a viable piece in the draft this year, imo.

i doubt denver will pay a first to get off johnson. i'm guessing teams with space will take him for free (us included). and they'd rather look to chicago before us, and chicago has basically an empty roster aside from giddy and buzelis (they have williams, okoro, dillingham, and some recent draft picks and spare parts, but no other obvious starters).

so, i think chicago is going to get the prime salary dumps this year, but...they can only take so much, and more than one team needs to consider moving off salary. okc, den, cle, orl...not all of them can dump it all to nj or chicago. someone might have to deal with us.

 

It’s amazing. They beat the Knicks without LeBron. I love it. This team plays so much better without LeBron. Just let Luka cook and let him go off. LeBrons a legend but the team looks like a different team. I’m just saying.

 

Luka 38 Reaves 29

 

Elephant in the room all year.

 

It’s about the prescense of LeBron. The team just plays more free when he’s not in there. They play more balanced. I don’t get it. Lukas smiling. And I’m a LeBron guy they might be able to compete without him.

 

They looked like a different team. All of a sudden Ayton is a lob threat for Luka. It’s crazy. Austin Reaves shooting threes from everywhere.

 

Knicks bricking shots left and right helped a bit too

 

I agree with this and your earlier comment. I think everyone just looks to defer to him because he's still LeBron even though we can see that his game isn't the same. Just a natural instinct they can't ignore given his stature.

It was really glaring when Luka passed on that shot against the Magic and threw it to LeBron. If LeBron's not there no way he doesn't shoot that. No way.