The Lakers Have Huge Decisions Coming...-1
The LA Lakers, LeBron James, and Anthony Davis season is over, and they are headed for an offseason of uncertainty.
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00:00 So the Lakers season is over and now we enter into an offseason for them where they have
00:04 really more questions than they have answers.
00:05 They know that they have LeBron, they know that they have Anthony Davis, and really the
00:08 rest of the roster is completely up in the air.
00:12 And this next statement is one that I honestly can't believe I'm saying, but the biggest
00:16 priority this offseason for the Lakers is retaining Austin Reeves.
00:19 Like he has been unbelievable for this team, especially in the second half of the season,
00:24 and they would not have gone as far as they did in the postseason without his contributions.
00:28 He had multiple 20 point games in the playoffs, he's shooting well from three, he at least
00:32 gives effort when he tries to guard defensively.
00:34 And when you have a player like that that can facilitate and can score, can defend a
00:39 little bit around LeBron, that is unbelievably valuable.
00:42 Now there's a little bit of a weird situation with his free agency where he's a restricted
00:47 free agent and the Lakers can't offer him like a huge contract extension up to like
00:51 I think 50 something million.
00:52 He's going to earn more than that, but they can match anything.
00:54 And I honestly think that priority one for the Lakers, short of a team offering Austin
00:58 Reeves like a hundred plus million dollars, is going to be to make sure that they retain
01:02 him, that they match any offers that they bring him back.
01:05 Because I really think that for the second part of the year, there were moments where
01:08 Austin Reeves was clearly their third best player.
01:11 A roster that includes other highly touted guys like Rui Hachimura and D'Angelo Russell,
01:16 he was their third best player.
01:17 He needs to be retained.
01:18 Speaking of D'Angelo Russell, this is where things get a little bit weird in terms of
01:22 how the Lakers are going to build their roster this offseason.
01:25 He's a free agent and at times the partnership has looked pretty good.
01:28 Like at times it's kind of similar to what happened with Austin Reeves, where he can
01:32 score a little bit, he can shoot the ball, he can facilitate.
01:35 But then there are other times where he just should not be on the floor.
01:37 And I think given no other options, I think the Lakers would like to bring back D'Angelo
01:42 Russell.
01:43 I think they'd rather not just lose him for nothing.
01:44 I think it was a relatively critical part of the midseason trades that they made.
01:49 And certainly credit to the Lakers front office for making those moves.
01:51 But the work is far from done going into this offseason if you want to continue to try and
01:55 be a contender.
01:56 And I think D'Angelo is at the top of that list.
01:58 Given no other options, I think D'Angelo is going to be back on the roster next year,
02:01 but I think they are really, really going to explore multiple different avenues here.
02:06 There's a Kyrie Irving sign and trade that works relatively cleanly here between Russell
02:10 and Irving.
02:11 If the Mavs just want to get some kind of value out of Irving, make sure that they have
02:15 a guard that they can play alongside Luka going into next season.
02:18 Even if D'Lo of course is not on the same talent level of Irving, maybe just the uncertainty
02:22 around Kyrie.
02:23 If you're Dallas, you'd rather have D'Lo in that situation and the Kyrie and LeBron
02:27 stuff until we find out where Kyrie is playing next year is always going to be a threat.
02:31 Those rumors have kind of picked up once again recently.
02:34 Would not be surprised at all, not only to see those rumors continue, but to see Kyrie
02:38 in a Lakers uniform next season.
02:40 And in terms of the other guys, it's kind of similar to when they won the title in the
02:44 bubble.
02:45 There's just a couple of guys that are really critical to their team that help them that
02:47 are going to be free agents.
02:48 Rui is going to be a free agent.
02:50 Dennis Schroeder is going to be a free agent and trying to figure out which of that core
02:54 four guys to keep between Schroeder, Reeves, D'Lo, and Rui again, all of which helped them,
02:59 most of which they acquired mid season.
03:02 It's going to be really difficult to figure out exactly which of those guys to keep.
03:05 And it's going to depend largely on whether or not they bring in Kyrie Irving because
03:08 the contract aspect of that really limits their ability to bring back all of those guys.
03:13 I would encourage them to bring back Reeves and Rui as, you know, the main priorities
03:16 of the off season.
03:17 That can really help them.
03:18 And then we'll kind of see what happens with the Kyrie thing.
03:20 Now, I do want to make one thing clear on the Kyrie thing because of these moves that
03:24 they made in the middle of the year, they're not going to be able to bring in Kyrie as
03:27 a free agent.
03:28 It's going to have to be a sign and trade situation.
03:30 There was a scenario in which if they hadn't made the moves that they did at the deadline,
03:35 they could have gone into the off season with a significant amount of cap space.
03:38 That's no longer a thing.
03:39 They have Malik Beasley on a team option that they could turn down.
03:42 It's about $16 million.
03:44 They have Obama on a non-guaranteed deal that they could, you know, buy him out.
03:47 They can create some cap space if they waive their rights to bring back Reeves, Rui, and
03:52 D'Lo, but they're not going to do that because then they're just going to be giving away
03:57 basically half their team to bring in someone like Kyrie Irving and Reeves, as I mentioned
04:01 in the beginning, I think is going to be a big priority for them.
04:02 So it has to be a sign and trade if they're going to bring in Kyrie.
04:06 Free agency, cap space in a significant way is really not a thing for the Lakers.
04:10 And the reason that all of this is important, to me at least, is you have to think about
04:14 this in the context of LeBron's career.
04:16 Obviously when you're trading away the 2027 first round pick, you're still trying to contend
04:20 while LeBron is there.
04:21 You have some other future first round picks you could trade as well.
04:24 And it's interesting that that's the mindset because this could be LeBron's last year as
04:30 a Laker.
04:31 If Bronny does well in college and he comes to the league the following season, LeBron
04:34 has said openly that he wants to play with this kid and that the Lakers don't select
04:37 him, if the Lakers don't find a way to get Bronny, depending on when he does come to
04:41 the NBA this year or the following, could be LeBron's last year as a Laker.
04:45 He could go somewhere else, request a trade, do all these different things to try and play
04:48 with this kid.
04:49 And that's really important because even as good as everybody else was around LeBron,
04:53 and at times he did look old in the postseason, when you have Anthony Davis and you have LeBron,
04:58 I think this team has proven that at this point, if they're healthy, that is still at
05:02 least a borderline championship contender.
05:04 You still are going to be heard from if the rest of the roster is kind of decent, can
05:08 score and defend a little bit.
05:10 And when you're thinking about the context of this group and how this season ended, continuing
05:14 to retain those core two guys together, especially in terms of keeping them together and making
05:19 sure Anthony Davis doesn't start thinking about going somewhere else anytime soon, is
05:22 really, really critical and I think is the main goal of the offseason.
05:25 Continue to build a contender around AD and LeBron, even if it looks different.
05:30 Even if D'Lo's not there, even if Ruby's not there, retain Austin Reeves, maybe you get
05:34 Kyrie, whatever the case may be.
05:36 There's a proof of concept here from this postseason run that says that AD LeBron, when
05:41 healthy, even at this stage of LeBron's career, is truly a contender.
05:45 And I honestly, earlier in the season, did not know if that's where this team stood.
05:49 And these midseason trades, of course, changed that completely.
05:51 As I mentioned earlier, they still have future first round picks to trade.
05:55 It's the Lakers.
05:56 They're always going to have interest in terms of teams, or in terms of, excuse me, young
05:58 players or older players that are going to want to join, like Lonnie Walker last year
06:01 just randomly decided to take probably less money to come to the Lakers.
06:05 Older guys chasing veterans, they're chasing championships, like that stuff's going to
06:07 happen if you're the Lakers.
06:08 They have that benefit, and you never know what's going to happen with them in terms
06:11 of chasing stars and trading away future picks and things like that.
06:14 But everything that they do this offseason, in my opinion, should be about building this
06:19 team in the image of this most recent team.
06:22 Because not only did they make an incredible postseason run, but once they made those deals
06:26 and guys got healthy, they were one of the best teams in the league.
06:28 And I think that's something that they can replicate next year.
06:31 And again, going with kind of that bubble championship team kind of mindset, with guys
06:35 that work well around LeBron and AD, and let those guys power you through a postseason
06:40 run.
06:41 Retain Reeves, add some shooting.
06:42 If you want to add Kyrie, sure, that's fine.
06:44 Whatever the D-low spot is, just another scoring guard that can take some pressure off LeBron,
06:48 kind of eat up some of the scoring load during the regular season.
06:52 All that stuff is going to be really critical.
06:54 Continue to build the team in this kind of mindset.
06:57 And then I'll just end here.
06:59 Even though the Lakers season did not get them all the way to the finals, I'm going
07:04 to take a little bit of an L on this one.
07:05 I said multiple times during the season that I didn't think that they were championship
07:08 contenders.
07:09 I liked the moves at the deadline.
07:11 I gave them an A grade for their moves at the deadline.
07:14 I thought, you know, it was really, ironically, I was really excited about Malik Beasley in
07:17 terms of the spacing he would provide.
07:19 And he barely mattered at all to the postseason run.
07:21 And even after I gave them an A plus, I still didn't think that it was a contender.
07:25 I didn't believe in this concept that LeBron and AD were going to be healthy throughout
07:28 the entirety of the postseason.
07:30 And you could argue that had LeBron been healthier towards the end of the year, dealing with
07:33 the foot injury and things like that, if we had the version of LeBron that was playing
07:37 in January, earlier in the year before the All-Star break, maybe they would have made
07:40 the finals.
07:41 Maybe they would have won a title.
07:44 It's weird to see a team change so dramatically and me change my opinion on them so dramatically
07:49 in just a span of a few months.
07:50 But getting rid of Russell Westbrook and the impact of that is something that I really
07:54 underestimated as well as bringing in all these other pieces.
07:57 And yeah, I'm going to take the L on that.
07:59 Even though their season is now over and they didn't make the finals, they pretty easily
08:02 could have depending on who they matched up with in the conference finals as well as LeBron's
08:06 health and things like that.
08:07 And shout out to the Lakers, man.
08:09 I did not think that this kind of year was coming for them and I cannot wait to see what
08:13 decisions they make this offseason.