30 teams in 30 days: Los Angeles Lakers offseason preview
By Jeff Siegel
Courtesy of last summer’s ill-advised spending spree and the price they’ve had to pay since to get out of one of those contracts, the Lakers won’t have a lot of room this summer. Rather, they’re all geared up for a free agent coup in 2018 after dumping Timofey Mozgov’s contract to the Nets and taking back Brook Lopez. Lopez will help the Lakers immensely on the offensive end and open things up for new point guard Lonzo Ball, but his best attribute is that his contract is up after the 2017-18 season. The Lakers won’t be big players this summer, but they can get to more than $51 million in space in 2018 just on the basis of their current roster.
The Lakers are playing for 2018, when they hope to unite Paul George and LeBron James in Los Angeles. Doing so will require $66.3 million in cap space ($30.6 million for George, $35.7 million for James), so the Lakers would still have some work to do from the $51.1 million they currently have projected to be available at that time. Of course, dumping Luol Deng’s contract would do the trick, but unless they’re willing to part with multiple first-round picks and perhaps one of their young players, it’s exceedingly unlikely that another team will be willing to take him.
Additionally, their first-round pick in the 2018 NBA Draft is already out the door to Philadelphia or Boston, depending on where it falls, which means the earliest first-rounder they could trade is in the 2020 NBA Draft. How valuable is a 2020 first-rounder from a team that would likely still employ George and James?
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This summer, it’s imperative that the Lakers don’t take on any additional money that bleeds into their 2018 cap. They can get to as much as $17.2 million in space this year if they renounce their current crop of free agents and cut the non-guaranteed contract of Tarik Black.
If Black is brought back, then it would benefit the Lakers to stay over the cap and use their mid-level exception ($8.4 million) and bi-annual exception ($3.3 million) to bring in new talent, but their needs and general franchise outlook don’t change much with that single decision. Black is a solid backup big man, but with Lopez, Julius Randle, Larry Nance Jr. and Ivica Zubac on the roster already, he may not be necessary. The Lakers are stocked on the wing with Deng, Jordan Clarkson, Corey Brewer, Brandon Ingram, Kyle Kuzma, Josh Hart and David Nwaba all competing for playing time, so it’s unlikely they spend to bring in a free agent to add to this crew. If they stay over the cap, they can always bring back Nick Young on a one-year balloon contract to give themselves another scoring option off the bench.
Another backup point guard for Ball is the Lakers’ most important target this summer. Clarkson has become a jack-of-all-trades guard for Los Angeles over these past few years and can handle the backup point guard duties in stretches, but taking a flyer on a point guard like Michael Carter-Williams or Trey Burke on one-year prove-it deals could be a prudent use of their cap space or exceptions. Ty Lawson or Deron Williams would also make sense as veterans to spell Ball. None of these options would be particularly expensive, leaving either their mid-level exception or quite a bit of space to round out the rest of the roster.
Outside of point guard, getting a shooting big man like Ersan Ilyasova or Jonas Jerebko on a one-year deal would help space the floor, though the acquisition of Brook Lopez will certainly help in that regard as well. Again, the directive for the Lakers is to not encumber their 2018 cap sheet, so anybody who wants a multi-year, fully-guaranteed contract should be off their radar. The Lakers could also use the remainder of their space to take on the final year of another team’s bad contract to pick up some more future assets, but they don’t have enough space to really get into the conversations for some of the bigger earners in the league.
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The Lakers are in a holding pattern since they can’t make a key addition to their team this summer without impacting next summer. After successfully driving the tank into the top three of the draft, though, they have no incentive to lose next season. Adding talent on the fringes to their young core will be priority No. 1, but no deal can go longer than one year because the Lakers have big plans for 2018.