Austin Reaves Discussion: Foundation Piece Or Trade Piece?

AR was on the Point Forward podcast, just dropped today. He wants the bag big time. If someone is stupid enough to overpay for him (like, really overpay), we're gonna be in trouble.

 

The lakers will be able to match unless they go cheap
And yes he's going to get the bag he's averaging 18pp with 5.6 apg on a ridiculous 71% TS percentage in March. Those are all-star guard numbers right there

 

Oh, I get it. Ball is in our court. I just hate getting more cap strapped.

 

Damn Austin. Are you alright?

 

As I said blew all his energy carrying us that 2 games.

 

This was like the Minnesota game: OKC is like bunch of Kawhi Leonard size dude with SGA out there. The athleticism made life difficult but I still thought he had a good game.

 

Terrible game. He obviously just had a flukey run lately, but this game showed his true colors. He’s just not a good basketball player.

If I was another team with cap space, there’s no chance I’d waste my cap room on this scrub

 

Giddy definitely gave Austin fits tonight. I would love to see him in the PNG someday in the future. He’s a taller version of Reaves with not as steady of a long ball.
I thought Austin also didn’t get a few calls where he obviously was fouled.
Anyway, he will bounce back against the Bulls.

 

Refs didn't wanna give him calls today it seems. It will be interesting to see how he's ref'd in the future after all the complaining on line about his "star" whistle the last few games.

He'll bounce back

 

+1 on Giddy, I fear him most among the OKC players, just too big for everyone to contain and a real monster




and yeah the foul hype on Reaves made the refs swallow their whistle.

 

I still thought Austin was good: he drew a ton of defensive attention and he played the PG position.

This is what @abeer3 has been talking about in terms of PG vs playmaker. It takes a lot of a dude to beat ball pressure, get the play going, and then also create in the 1/2 court. He was still a +4 and yes his TS% dropped to Westbrook levels but he had 9 assists vs 3 TO's. If you thought of him a PG and w/o D Lo that was what he was it would be a decent game

 

More talk on what's likely going to be needed with the Arenas rule to keep Austin a Laker.

https://theathletic.com/4340736/202...ba-lakers/?source=weeklyemail&campaign=602288

How Austin Reaves, Lakers will be impacted by CBA’s Gilbert Arenas provision

By Danny Leroux
Mar 24, 2023
48

Generally speaking, an NBA player’s current team wields financial advantages when it comes time for them to hit free agency. From the potential ability to negotiate an extension beforehand to Bird rights, the league’s collective bargaining agreement deliberately (and properly, in my opinion) establishes ways for teams to keep talent around while preserving the ability for other teams to get involved.

That said, this summer has a prominent case featuring one of the more interesting wrinkles in that dynamic: the Gilbert Arenas provision. While the rest of this breakdown also applies to Chicago’s Ayo Dosunmu, Austin Reaves is the more exciting example as of now.

As Reaves has been on the Lakers for two seasons, the team possesses early Bird rights on him as his contract expires. That gives Rob Pelinka and the front office a few different avenues to re-sign Reaves, which may or may not be available in this specific circumstance:

1. Bird rights: Since the Lakers have early Bird rights on Reaves, they can use them to sign him to a contract starting at the larger of 175 percent of his current salary or 105 percent of the league’s average salary for the previous season for up to four years. Using current projections, that would be an upper limit of roughly a four-year, $50.8 million contract.
2. Midlevel exception: Not particularly relevant here because Reaves’ $11.3 million starting salary using early Bird rights is basically identical to the nontaxpayer MLE (currently projected starting salary of $11.368 million per RealGM), so the Lakers would much rather use early Bird to preserve their MLE to add new talent. Plus, Pelinka may not have the nontaxpayer MLE available because using it triggers the hard cap, and retaining other free agents such as D’Angelo Russell could push them over that threshold.
3. Cap space: Technically speaking, any team can offer something beyond those other limitations using cap space, but I do not expect the Lakers to have it after their trade deadline deals. It’s possible but unlikely in this case.

Taking these together, the richest contract the Lakers can reasonably offer Reaves is that four-year, $50.8 million deal via early Bird rights, though it is important to note that cap-space caveat.

A short break for a history lesson: Back in 2003, Arenas broke out with the Warriors and scored 18.3 points per game as a full-time starter in just his second season. As the first pick of the second round, Arenas originally signed a two-year contract, so he was hitting restricted free agency with early Bird rights at a very opportune moment for him. At the time, the Warriors were capped out and had the same basic tools to retain Arenas that the Lakers wield now with Reaves but in a much lower cap environment. That created an opportunity for the Wizards to swoop in and extend a six-year, $65 million offer sheet that the Warriors did not have the realistic capacity to match, so Washington signed the eventual three-time All-Star. The owners and players responded to that situation by creating a new concept in the next CBA commonly called the Arenas provision where (in a simplified, abridged description) other teams are not allowed to sign early Bird restricted free agents to an offer sheet their current teams cannot match.

A logical response to that would be, “Is Reaves limited to that four-year, $50.8 million contract?” And, fortunately for him, the answer is no.

When owners and players created the Arenas provision, they also opened up a path for the affected restricted free agents through the offer sheet process. While offer sheets in this situation cannot go over the nontaxpayer MLE amount for the first two seasons (with up to a 5 percent bump in Year 2), they are allowed to push the third season of the offer sheet as far as the player in question’s full maximum salary for that year had the signing restriction not been in place for the first two seasons, though it can be lower than that, too, of course. For Reaves, that means another franchise could sign him to an offer sheet looking like this:

Potential Austin Reaves offer sheet
SEASON SALARY
2023-24
$11,368,000
2024-25
$11,946,400
2025-26
$36,850,000
2026-27
$38,508,250
Total value: $98.67 million

That is a whole lot more than $50.8 million. If this contract structure looks familiar, you might recall the last time these offer sheets made a huge splash, in 2012, when then-Rockets GM Daryl Morey signed Jeremy Lin and Ömer Aşık to offer sheets like this that the Knicks and Bulls, respectively, chose not to match. It is important to remember the last part of that: Even though these offer sheets were richer than new contracts the Knicks and Bulls could have offered themselves, both still had the power to match, so the Lakers could make different choices.

Something else to consider: Typically, a team only needs to have the financial flexibility to fit in a player’s actual first-year salary via cap space or exception. However, since the CBA creates such a big difference between where the contract starts and ends in these cases, a maximum allowable Reaves offer sheet like this requires $24.7 million in cap space: the average value of the entire contract rather than the first-year salary. This same calculation applies for an offer sheet that jumps more than a “normal” 5 percent in the third year but not all the way to Reaves’ max should that happen instead, so that narrows the pool of teams that can credibly make the offer in the first place. Also, the Lakers cannot sign-and-trade Reaves to a contract like this because, as discussed above, they do not have the ability to sign him to it in the first place.

That makes it an all-or-nothing proposition for both the Lakers and potential suitors, and the Arenas provision creates a fascinating dynamic because there is a scenario in which the Lakers can pay Reaves more than they can sign him to themselves but only if another team actually makes the bid and is willing to tie up its cap space as the Lakers decide whether or not to match.

Is there a team willing to roll those dice? Possibly, but not definitely. I project the Rockets, Jazz, Spurs, Magic, Thunder, Pacers and maybe the Hornets to wield the requisite cap space for an offer meaningfully over the nontaxpayer MLE whether it is the maximum allowable offer sheet or something lower than that. But prioritizing Reaves presents a huge risk since the Lakers can match and have a reasonably high chance of doing so, as losing another valued contributor without the ability to replace him would be incredibly damaging.

 

still think jazz and pacers, maybe magic are the biggest threats. but i don't see even them going beyond a 4/70 or something. just can't see the scenario in which we don't match. and a THT contract is also still possible, imo.

 

We also have going for us, definitely in this case, we're the Lakers and they're NOT!! Grandma's team, Kobe Bryant, Austin has all the love in the world here under the brightest lights and he's playing with HOF teammates with a chance to be competitive in the playoffs going forward at least a couple years, on paper at least. Usual caveats with health.

 

He’s not leaving.
No doubt in my mind.

 

He isn't leaving, but if another team signs him to a 70mil offer sheet, we might just let him go.

Is LA worth 20mil in perks and business opps?

 

if another team signs him to a 70 million offer sheet, we match. the concern is if someone goes insane and offers him 90-100 million. again, don't think that's happening, and it's just media fear-mongering because they're mad we have yet another draft score. wait for next year when it's max christie we supposedly won't be able to afford to keep.

 

Hopefully LeBron doesn't f up Reaves game