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

Please don’t try to be talking yourself out of Kaminga now. Look he’s not coming here to be Stephen Curry. Or Reggie Miller nobody said that. Rui Hachiumura is the wayyy better shooter and I wanted us to keep him. The team is structured different now. Kaminga is here to go to the basket. Get to the line. And finish when Austin and Luka find him. His game is not catch and shoot ala buddy Hield so stop with that narrative. Hes gotta play defense here. He’ll be a fan favorite.

 

yeah, pretty much this:



i don't think we're going to get him anymore, but i'm not going to pretend like i won't be disappointed.

i never thought he was superstar material, but the pendulum has swung too far the opposite way.

 

looks athletic and coordinated

wonder why he gets such a bad rap

 

It seems they rejected Vando + swap and growing reports that he might actually stay

 

they've only got 5m in tax space. curious to see if they think preserving kuminga as a potential trade asset is worth going into the tax when they basically have a roster without doing so. they only have 11-13m before the apron, too, if that matters to them. considering kuminga turned down 10 from us, they'd have to be willing to go into the tax (and probably over the first apron) to get close to what he wants.

i guess they could send out salary some other way to make room.

i get why they wouldn't want vando, given the above--he'd take them over the first apron whilst not being a player they wanted to acquire. that's a hard no for me, too.

i just don't know why kuminga would want to spend another year as an explicit trade chip.

holding out hope for knecht to sac, jake to washington, kuminga to us. 2nds to everyone but us.

 

Do Knecht. Do Hardy. Keep Jake. Aside from Adou who's not ready for big minutes yet LaRavia is our strongest and quickest Big wing on the perimeter. With some offensive game, compared to Vando.

 

i don't think we can send hardy back to washington, lol, and i chose them deliberately due to their TE size and the fact that we've been friendly with them throughout rob's tenure.

i like jake, too; i'd just trade him for kuminga or any other clear starting quality player at a position of need.

 

Read that we can't aggregate Hardy with another player for 45 days since he signed, so until late August.
Wondering how that will influence our moves and even if wait for that to do them which would be weird

 

they have to ditch a bunch of players to keep him. That's interesting.

 

I thought we could aggregate him because we were under the cap when we acquired him.

Vando, LaRavia, Hardy, Knecht to Denver for Gordon does make sense for bithe teams.

Lakers left with 4.6 million under the 1st apron after the trade, which would allow them to sign a vet minimum for the 14th roster spot, and still have around 2 million left to potentially use later in the season. Gordon is a solid player to use as the bridge option for Thiero.

Nuggets get long term salary cap relief and get under tge apron by an additional 3.5 million or so. Combine that apron savings with stretching Vanderbilt, and you have about 20 million to pay to Watson. 24 mill if they stretch LaRavia or Hardy. Nuggets are also able to fill out roster without adding additional salary.

 

i like it, but no chance denver lets gordon, johnson, or watson end up here.

i'm watching charlotte right now because they have a glut of players and a bunch of money they can still (some they may need to) spend.

 

Really? No chance, as in zero? How are you so certain? What players do you think we actually have a chance of getting then?

 

Yeah Buha just said that this was the understanding of many, including Spotrac site that also says so, and himself tweeted that but was told by some cap experts that we can because he was traded to us while we had cap space, like you said. You're right!

Great news because he's most certainly gone

If I'm Denver I'd have no interest in giving a talented player that is the missing piece of this whole 2026 LA operation to a rival contender in the conference.
We don't even need to go the Laker tax and recent rivalry, you just can't help another team that competes directly with you.

That's a last resort thing and they'd need some pick incentive to even go there. Also, that's like a 4 for 1 deal with a bunch of scrubs/end of 2nd unit type of guys for a legitimate starter player.

Basically we are in the same tier as them right now, maybe even slightly below, and after that trade we become way better than them and actually a full tier above.

Can't see the incentive to Denver to do it from a sports, financial or competitive perspective

 

ESPN can't help themselves when it comes to the Lakers. East coast bias or just plain Lakers dislike?

NBA offseason grades:

Los Angeles Lakers

Grade: C+

The Lakers might have been the busiest team of the summer. But did all that activity make them better, or were they merely running in place?

In came Walker Kessler, Sandro Mamukelashvili, Quentin Grimes, Collin Sexton, Kevon Looney, Jaden Hardy, Matisse Thybulle and Ziaire Williams. Out went LeBron James, Rui Hachimura, Marcus Smart, Luke Kennard, Deandre Ayton and Jaxson Hayes.

Put another way: Of the top seven Lakers in playoff minutes this spring, the newly extended Austin Reaves is the only player still on the roster. He, Luka Doncic and Kessler form a strong three-man core. But the Lakers now have one of the NBA's weakest forward groups, a glaring hole at backup center and almost no remaining draft assets to trade after giving up a haul for Kessler, who has never really played a meaningful NBA game.

The Lakers mostly did well with depth signings such as Thybulle and Williams. But it's hard to overcome not replacing James' production, even in his 40s. They have less flexibility now, and it's hard to say with confidence that they're any closer to title contention.

https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id...season-grades-30-teams-free-agency-trades#lal

 

Chuck barkley wrote that

 

**** ESPN in all their ears.

 

yeah, same reason okc was never sending us dort. we're threats to them. if they hand us gordon and he still has anything in the tank, it's a double whammy. johnson would be a great fit, too, and they DO NOT WANT THAT.

 

Oh that makes it all better

He doesn't like the Lakers either

 

Who you callin’ young? get off my lawn!!

 

if mamu is a backup center (which is where he's mostly played), we don't have a hole there. between him and looney, we have backup centers.

the "weakest forwards evar" is kind of weird because luka's a forward. aside from him we have vando, jake, ziaire, and thiero, so yeah, it's a weakness.

if we don't shore that up, i tend to agree with the C+ grade. i might go B- because williams and thybulle were great vet min pickups, imo.

another way to consider the offseason would be just based on who was in and out.

kessler/lebron: short term loss, but might not be as big as people think depending on lebron's health
rui/mamu: depends on if you care about the regular season or the playoffs. mamu was a MUCH better player last year until the playoffs, where rui was MUCH better.
grimes/smart: again, possibly a short-term loss, but i'm not positive about that. long term, my money is on grimes as the wise choice
sexton/kennard: probably a wash

so, we largely treaded water, but we have a younger team that suits our primary star better. we don't have much in the way of draft assets, but we have a few promising projects and lots of remaining financial flexibility.

i'm not sure any of the teams ahead of us or near us did any better, tbh.

denver's done nothing yet and isn't expected to improve. houston's done basically nothing (added smart, who's a bit redundant there, imo). minny essentially traded reid and randle for lamelo. yay? okc lost three guys (BUT GAINED 7 SECOND ROUNDERS). SA added tobias harris (this may be the biggest actual addition without subtraction, and they were already ahead of us, lol). gs has done nothing.

i don't know; i'll have to look at what constitutes an A for these guys.

edit: well, they gave SA an A for harris and wemby taking a paycut. charlotte got an A for stripping its best team in years down for parts, lol.

utah got an A because we overpaid for kessler. that's the argument. like, the author admits that utah will be worse because of this, but it's a great offseason cuz...it's really about 5 years from now. which is what it was about for utah 5 years ago as well.

grizz got a B for...getting rid of everyone.

ok, i don't need to read any more. this has nothing to do with whether you made your team better.