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

16/82 20% of the season.

A playoffs series is 7 games. 16/21 games is a small sample size to you? Or are we just pretending we don't know how to do math?

 

LeBron was better than him but that's an inconvenient discussion you guys don't want to have.

LeBron was the better rebounder, defender, passer, and healthier throughout the season.

Reaves AST-TO ratio was pretty poor for a playmaker.

One could argue Reaves is too free throw reliant whereas LeBron gets constantly snuffed by the refs on no calls so I'm not sure how much you want to attribute that to Reaves when that's mostly a reffing issue with LeBron.

LeBron actually had to sacrifice to make the team work or else he gets blamed, which he did.

I mean, we don't have to get into the playoffs where it was obvious LeBron led the Lakers past the Rockets, do we? Would we have that same level of confidence if it was Reaves instead of LeBron? C'mon, you and I know that answer to that question.

 

I don't think so. I think the main issue is he is playing for a franchise like the Lakers and the players who came before him. Does how he came into the league playing a part? I think to a smaller point. You have to understand he never participated in any allstar games or represented lakers on a star level. So it's not exactly the way one sees him it's just that he never did. How can you be or represent something without actually doing it? Lakers are use to stars among stars not fringe among stars. No different than lakers expectations are competing for titles. We don't target no pun Jamal Crawford and pay Shaq money we target Shaq.

 

Well it's a big number. Think it too high for him TBH. He's not a max contract player imo he's had trouble staying healthy, physically can get overpowered, and he gets hunted a lot on defense. The problem as well with his defense is the team can't seem to figure out how to protect him either. Brunson does a lot of show and go to prevent the head hunting maybe AR just doesn't have the foot speed or processing power to make that work? Just dismissing the defensive concerns because he's a player people like doent sit well with me just like how the Vando realists won out - good teams if they have prep time the idea is to go at him over anything else

That being said this maybe a market issue. He's worth what the market decides and maybe he was getting offers from teams with cap space. Hopefully he works on his body rather then his golf game this summer. He needs to get stronger and that will help his D pretty quickly IMO

 

And that's the issue. We could be wrong but we have not seen anything that gives confidence they can.

 

Do Detroit even have cap space to give the max offer to Reaves? I'm pretty sure they didn't.

what bothers me is the Lakers having leverage not to pay him the max due to the cap space situation with other teams, and still paying him the max.

That's not how winning franchises operate. If the Knicks had done the same with Brunson or even Bridges, they wouldn't have won the ring this year.

With that said, I'm happy for the kid, great for him grabbing generational wealth, but to be fair, when we're talking this kind of money, there's not much difference between someone making 160M or 185M.

 

Can’t wait to see this board get spammed all season by people who refuse to accept basic economic principles.

 

I will go out on a limb and say Austin contract from Lakers could be a combination of repayment from his production outweighing his pay.'and his potential moving forward

 

Highly unlikely they would have won without the sacrifices the players took both playing and financially. That's what I said about this team why they won't win. I felt Austin was playing to get paid, Luka was playing to win MVP and scoring title. Lebron to prove he still got and Then you had the other free agents.

 

And despite all that selfishness from our 3 best players they were playing like one of the best teams in the league for 1/4 of the season until Luka and Austin got hurt. Crazy how that works.

 

I agree with this. The MVP chase killed our offseason chances

now this Austin contract situation gives the distinct impression this franchise does not have a winning culture nowadays.

and I mean, that's apparently fine with a lot of people, but that's not the nature of the Lakers and why they have 17 rings.

 

lol, see this is going as expected.

i thought we might get 5/200, but i was bracing for the max. i guess at least it's only 4 years.

 

^ @abeer3 Called it on the max.

Do I think he's worth it? No. And I don't want to hear about the discount he took the last few years — that's the past. I'm living in the right now.

But the deal's done, and honestly, I saw a number starting with a "4" coming. This thing has the potential to age really badly. I'm hoping it doesn't turn into another JV situation, but I'd be lying if I said that wasn't a possibility.

Here's the thing though — if Luka wants him back, you don't have a choice. You're not going to piss off your franchise cornerstone over this. Not right now. Not ever, really.

So fine. Deal's done. Move on.

What this does is put a massive spotlight on Thiero and Carr. And more importantly, it puts the spotlight on the organization — do you actually have the infrastructure to develop these guys? Because they're good fits next to Luka and Reaves, and they're cheap. That matters. That's how you build around two max contracts.

You pay Reaves that kind of money? I can live with it — IF his production holds, IF he gets better when it counts in the playoffs, and IF these young guys become legitimate rotation players on those cheap deals. That's the bet. That's the whole bet. Along with a legit 5.