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

He's correct with the correct iteration of the team; however, Grimes & LaRavia are bench players.

 

again, i'm not like kuminga's #1 fan or anything, but people have gone way overboard on the negativity:



golden state's d****** owner put too much on his potential as a torch-bearer for their fictitious two-decade dynasty, and it went to his head and probably affected his coaches and teammates, too.

but he's net positive on both ends, has great positional size and room to grow. here's spencer jones:



jones is actually 2 years older than kuminga.

and yeah, advanced stats in denver are all weird due to jokic, imo, but still.

anyway, i think kuminga could really break out here, as his role would be different than it was in gs, and the system is very different. gs was essentially pg-less, and we're very pg-heavy. what he has to do on offense will be simpler and more suited to his strengths.

 

Kuminga works; he needs to commit to his role.

Grab a backup 5, a starting 3/4, and a minimum (Thybulle). The roster looks much more balanced.

 

abeer's right, we are hard capped at the first apron due the Kessler trade. We still have Lebron's Bird Rights, and there is a 17M gap to the first apron. We can waive and stretch Vando, salary dump Lavaria and get Lebron to that 30M mark. That could work, no?

 

nope.

we don't technically have any cap space until we renounce our cap holds. just the hold alone for either rui or lebron eats up enough space that basically any other move becomes impossible (most importantly, the kessler trade). when you renounce the hold, you can no longer go over the cap to sign your player (because they're no longer your player, technically). it's a little complicated because a) bird rights are reinstated if you re-sign them, even after renouncing the rights (lolwut?) and b) the term unrestricted free agent covers more than one condition (you can either have rights or not).

so, because atlanta decided to operate over the cap, they never had to renounce kuminga's rights...even after they declined the team option to make him a UFA. so they can still sign him to a max, S&T him, etc.

since we chose to operate under the cap, we will have to either renounce all of our holds (lebron, rui, luke) or trade them for no returning salary before we execute the kessler trade and all of our signings (we can do the ayton trade whenever, as we gained 2m in space from it).

so, to answer your question, if we stretch-waive vando to get the 7m and move jake for nothing, that's still just the 13 million we can use. ironically, we have more routes to pay kuminga (or some other team's player under contract) more money than we do lebron (bc he can't be signed and traded to us by us).

i'm guessing the radio silence on kuminga has to do with the myriad options out there for how things can go down, as well as the lebron and rui situations getting ironed out. as i outlined, if some team created a TE that they could take either guy into, we could probably net a 2nd rounder for facilitating before moving on to our other stuff. the pick may help make getting kuminga (or some other comparable piece) easier.

 

Feel like LeBron is going back to Cleveland. He was spotted in Akron yesterday which obviously isn't shocking in and of itself since he's from there, but the more I think about it I think Cleveland still makes the most sense. As opposed to the Warriors, Cleveland is just good enough already that you could kind of talk yourself into LeBron putting them over the top. The Wolves and Nuggets are apparently on his list, but Lebron is so image/narrative driven that I think it has to be somewhere with narrative significance to him. So really just Warriors, Cleveland, Miami or back to us (which I still think there's like, a .5% chance of).

Mitchell, Harden and LeBron together is weird, but it occurred to me that you could just bring Harden off the bench. I don't think Harden would actually care so long as he has the contract he wants. It would be kind of fun to see 6th man Harden again. It just seems like the best combination of narrative, the team is actually good and the team actually needs him.

 

I see, so the cba is made so that teams can't get the best worlds. That a) lulwut? part had me confused I guess. So when you renounce a player's cap hold, you lose the right to sign them over the cap, but still retain their Bird Rights? That makes no sense.

 

I think the narrative with joining the Knicks, Spurs, Heat, and Cavs would be that he's ring-chasing. I'm not sure if wants that stain on his legacy. He's seen enough (ie Durant) to know that rings won by joining a contender are worth less. GSW have been struggling and Lebron would be viewed as the Messiah if they bounce back.

 

yeah, i may have that wrong, but i feel like i looked it up, and if we were to sign rui to a vet min after renouncing his rights, his bird rights clock would just pick back up, meaning next year we could sign him over the cap.

https://www.hoopsrumors.com/2024/03/hoops-rumors-glossary-bird-rights-6.html

this applies to both rui and lebron for us. the mavs did this with dirk nowitzki at the end of his career, and it's what i wanted lebron to do here but he's an a**.

 

Yeah, if we're able to pull off a trade with the Clippers for Derrick Jones Jr as our starting 3 for Jake, DK and Hardy with our three Seconds as incentive and then waive Vando and use the empty cap space created by moving off of him and Hardy in order to sign Kuminga as our starting 4, that starting roster is fantastic IMO.

Luka Doncic
Austin Reaves
Derrick Jones Jr
Jonathan Kuminga
Walker Kessler

From there, fill out the remaining open roster slots with vet mins for Nick Richards, Ziaire Williams and Matisse Thybulle and suddenly this team's bench looks monstrously better than it did last year. Obviously it's not OKC tier of elite depth, but it's ultimately more compelling to me than if we'd kept building a bench around Rui, Kennard and Jake. Losing Marcus though was unquestionably a huge loss for us here though, as he'd have been an elite bench piece for us IMO.

Collin Sexton
Quentin Grimes
Ziaire Williams
Sandro Mamukelashvili
Nick Richards
Adou Thiero
Cameron Carr
Matisse Thybulle
Bronny James Jr (or TBH if Bronny gets shipped off to wherever Bron ultimately lands at)

 

Ok yes for now with no back up center and PF maybe a playin team. That can change when they address the situation.

 

Yeah. Grab Kuminga and we actually have the framework for a balanced team.


But for the love of everything get him (or whatever player we sign) on a team option and not a player option.

 

Yeah I never saw anything confirming we renounced his rights.

 

LeBron is high maintenance and always has been. He will definitely wait until things have gone quiet to get his full tv cycle and Rich Paul will cater to his greatest client.

He wants his full glory on his last run or two IMO so I suspect he heads back to Cleveland or Miami where the fan bases fully love him.

He was always going to be just another star to wear the jersey here and could not climb to the heights of popularity of Kobe, Magic, Kareem, etc.

I think he wants that for his swan song and will head where that can happen.

Thanks for the ring but it’s definitely the right time for this chapter of Laker history to end.

Once the front office has been completely overhauled we can really close the book on all of this.