Roberson is 2nd in the league when it comes to defensive win shares and has a defensive rating of 96.6 averaging 26.6 minutes per game (that's crazy!). Meanwhile, Zo is 10th in the entire league when it comes to defensive win shares. His defensive rating is 102.0 while averaging 33.3 minutes per game and if PG were to come on board, he would be joined with BI's lanky a** out on the perimeter.
as long as we find creative ways to makeup for any $ lost in yr 1, pg shouldnt be bothered. The cp3 route is best for all sides anyway imo, pg will get the bird rights 5yr max in 19' instead of just 4yrs if we signed him this off season n of course we save bout 8-9mill for 18', that net difference should give us enough to retain randle w/o having to trade or stretch Deng imo, say we can pull off something like deng/clev 1st for wes mathews (expiring), our lineup would be legit if james or dmc comes ball/hart bi/hart pg/mathews randle/Kuz/thomas lopez (stop gap till dmc is healthy)/dmc/zu or ball ingram pg lebron randle
Paul George could absolutely pull off what Chris Paul did to the Clippers and demand a trade to LA. The key is being able to threaten them with just walking to us so it forces OKC to take a deal or get nothing. The difficult part would be figuring out a deal that makes sense for both sides. Houston used the Clippers to dump some expiring deals and a few young, not-so-exciting prospects. We don't have those types of players so we would end up offering them something Deng related which is probably a non-starter for them... Still, just for fun, let's say they accepted a Deng/Zubac/Protected 2019 1st (assuming we use the Cleveland Pick)/2 2nds. That would mean we'd have: George- 20.7 Randle- 12.5 Lonzo- 7.5 Ingram- 5.8 Kuzma- 1.7 Hart- 1.7 Bryant- 1.4 Cap Holds- 3.5 Total- 54.8 That leaves 46.2 million to spend. You give LeBron his 35.4 million and you still have 11.4 million to work with. Backup point guard anyone? Thomas maybe? Tyreke Evans an outside chance? Ironically, a small part of me could see Carmelo opting out of his contract and signing for that so that he could team up with his buddy (although it'd have to be in a bench role). Keep the pitchforks away people, I'm not saying I want that to happen. But other options are Avery Bradley, Trevor Ariza, maybe even bring Pope back off the bench or something. Lopez of course should be in the mix. You end up with something like: Lonzo/??? George/Hart Ingram/Ariza/CLE pick LeBron/Kuzma Lopez/Randle/Bryant with Lopez playing only 20 minutes a night and Randle closing games. A death lineup of Lonzo/George/Ingram/LeBron/Randle. You also could then sign George to a 5 year extension if he wants it. You could give Julius his 18 million and go over the cap. Go all in on that squad and become immediate contenders.
doesnt have to be deng (okc would rather lose pg for nothing over getting deng IMO).....okc could just get a tpe in place of pg contract n we give them a few 2nds or so for their troubles....okc isnt gona pay luxury tax for deng n few minor low end picks
Oh I agree. I was just having some fun. We could make that deal with them and then still dump Deng separately though.
think that opt-in n trade is absolute best okc can do as far as having options....they can use the tpe later on in the yr to absorb expiring for assets, take on a disgruntled star, or simply waive it and possibly avoid repeater tax penalties
You make an excellent point. I think OKC could ask for something like that if George plans on signing with us and obviously it'd help us. It sort of helps George in the long run too if he trusts us to get him two big contracts. The thing for George to make that decision would be: how many big contracts does he have in him? If he makes that move, do we immediately extend him for four years bringing him to about 31-32 years old. He'll get one more big contract then. I'd love that move honestly. I think it makes some sense for everyone if Paul George decides he wants to make the jump. Saves us about 10-11 million, gets George where he wants to be, and gives OKC options. I love it. In fact if we made that move, we could waive Deng, sign LeBron, and still have Julius's Bird Rights so we wouldn't even technically need to attach assets and trade Deng away, we could just stretch him.
This is where I am having trouble with. It sounded like we don't need to entice PG to come to LA but rather lay out a scenario where he has to do us a favor for taking him. Now, I get that CP3 did what he did for a championship-contending team and that's precisely the point, Rockets is a championship contending team. While we're showing enormous potential, I don't think even if Paul George arrives, we'll really become that threat as Rockets now are in contending for a title, at least not right away. I understand the point made where if PG wants a competitive team, he has to have his contribution financially if need be in order to achieve an optimum scenario but what is that optimum scenario really is? Sent from my E6533 using Tapatalk
We can offer him a max contract if he walks here. That's not an issue. Personally, I'm not asking him to give that up. BUT if he wants to help the team's finances in terms of securing a 2nd max deal, then a trade would be beneficial. We would of course still offer him a max extension after the trade is executed, but it'd help our bottom line right now. It would be the same in terms of Chris Paul "sacrificing" (he didn't sacrifice anything) in order to win now. Once Paul George gets here, we give him a max extension of 5 years (including the opt-in season) worth around 154 million dollars. We can then trade Deng/Zubac/whatever for a protected future pick. Sign LeBron to a 4 year max deal worth about 4/149 million or so. Sign someone else with the 10-11 million left over. Sign Julius for something like 4/81 million or so. Sign someone with the 4 million dollar room exception. Win 65 games. Beat the Warriors. Beat the C Bags to get 17.
the 2nd max opt is still feasible with pg if he does cp3 route...we give him 5yr max with player opt after yr 3. At yr 3 we agree to a 2nd max deal ext. taking him into his mid 30s, pg shouldnt be worried bout us taking care of our stars, kobe got 25mill a yr at 36yrs old, Pau got 20mill a yr at 30 something when market for him then was in the mid teens
like the ideas, but i'm pretty sure the ideal situation (george dealt into cap space after opting in) can't happen here. i'm fairly certain his opt-in needs to be before free agency. so, the lakers don't have cap space for him to move into. the clips' guys were all under contract for the following year at the time of the trade. it would have to be deng, which, given their cap situation, isn't ideal--people are saying they won't spend on george/westbrook, imagine deng/westbrook for 4 million less! this is part of why i wanted to see deng's deal broken up into smaller parts at the deadline. it's a monkey wrench in many ways...
all can be agreed upon n executed when time permits...cp3 didnt have a 1 day epiphany when he went from opting out to opting in n traded within 1 day time
@Khmrp I agree that the best thing for the Lakers and even for OKC is to have PG opt in and then get traded so that OKC gets some assets back. If we trade for PG, we can distinguish him as our veteran designated player and offer him the designated player extension which can be as high as 35% of the cap and can be 6 years in length including the player opted 20.7M that he exercised to be dealt to us. Also once we designate him and extend him, he cannot be traded for 1 calendar year. This gives George more guaranteed money instead of just walking onto the roster as a free agent (35% vs 30%) and essentially gives him a no trade clause for his first year in case things don't work out with LaBron and the gang. However @abeer3 is right in that you need players that have guaranteed money on their contracts to deal for PG who opts into his player option year. LA does not have those contracts other than our youngns and Deng. Ironically the Pacers have some solid expiring contracts: Bogdonavic, Collison and Jefferson all make 10M each next season and each of those expiring deals are not fully guaranteed. Those contracts would be perfect to reroute to OKC in a Deng dump, but do the Pacers conduct business with us even if we heavily incentivize Deng with draft picks and young assets? I doubt it. Rob would have to get really creative in facilitating a George opt in and trade followed by a veteran designated player extension, but he's already done so much in his 1st year that maybe he's got something cooking as we speak. I wouldn't be surprised if he somehow pulled it off.
So now imagine Prime PG-13 coming to LA and then a year longer of experience for the current crew. Lakers very well could be going after 1-4 next year with their talent. If they had Boogie and Boogie is healed from his injury, the Lakers could very well be on their way to title contenders in 2 years.
What am I missing .... who are you wanting to "trade" of what's left of our best young players for Paul George? That's not going to be cheap talent wise and we can just sign him. I missed something .... right?
We wouldnt be trading players for pg, just some minor picks so okc will get something over nothing plus a huge TPE. We want this route cause pg opt in is only 20mill n pg would get a 5yr bird rights deal with higher raises instead of signing as a fa with us
Also to be clear, there is currently no traded player exception (TPE) that is large enough for a team to absorb Deng's contract (18.8M). The largest in the league right now are the Bulls 12.5M TPE for the Niko trade and the Blazers 13M TPE for the Crabbe trade. A TPE has to be large enough to absorb the player's contract, so we can't simply trade Deng into anyone's TPE cause there aren't any in the league. Think back to how Dallas traded for LO with their TPE and that created a 8.9M TPE for us that allowed us to trade for Nash. All these transactions only involved picks and no outgoing players. However at the turn of the seasonal year (July 1st 2018), there will be a handful of teams, including the Lakers, that can absorb contracts into their cap space and create TPE's for the team delivering that player. So essentially, George can be traded into LA's cap space and that gives OKC a TPE of that amount. We're allowed to do a trade like this since we're below the cap of 102M (projected) and even after the trade we'll be below that mark. You're only allowed to make trades without any restrictions if you're a team below the cap and any incoming salary puts you at 100K or less above the salary cap. With Deng, Randle's cap hold and our guaranteed contracts including the Cavs pick: we're at just under 52M, which gives us roughly 50M in cap space. PG opts into his player option year of 20.7M and he fits into that cap space with plenty room to spare. If PG's contract were to put us at a penny over 102.1M (projected) then that trade would be in violation. What OKC gets out of it: They're a team that has 117M in guaranteed salary if Melo opts in and will start paying luxury taxes at 123M. They do not have a 2018 1st round pick and will only be armed with the 5.6M tax paying MLE, since the non-tax paying MLE of 8.8M would put them over the 123M tax threshold. So with these restrictions, it would be in OKC's best interest to receive a 20M TPE that they can use to trade for a player within a year's time (see previously mentioned LO trade). On top of that, maybe LA makes it worth their while by attaching some more assets in the trade since they do not have a 2018 pick. Meanwhile with George on the roster, we'd be at around 73M in team salary and would have roughly 30M to go get LaBron. That number would be 41M if we stretch out Deng. Or we can dump Deng into another team's cap space and create a TPE of our own (I'm looking at you Chicago or Sactown). And since we traded for PG and his bird rights and assuming he makes an All-NBA team this year, he'll be eligible to be tagged as one of our veteran designated players. That allows us to give him an extension that maxes out to 35% of our cap space and counting his player option 20.7M year, it would be for 6 years in length. That is more money that he would have got if he just walked into our cap space. Hope that clarifies stuff and apologies if I got anything incorrect.
