Aloha, Michael. LOL.
Best way never to miss is never to shoot.
Of course, we kall now there was never a shot I didn’t like as a player and never a trade opportunityi I wouldn’t explore as a blogger.
How the Lakers Can Rebuild Roster by Taking Advantage of Sign-and-Trades!
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June 29, 2021 18 Comments
Before the last two years, sign-and-trades were rare transactions because teams didn’t want to get hardcapped, players who were free agents didn’t want to the team they were going to lose assets, and matching salaries can be difficult due to base year compensation rules for sign-and-trades. In fact, from 2015 to 2019, there were only four cases of sign-and-trades.
That all changed the last two years when there has been a renaissance in sign-and-trades with over a dozen happening the last two years, including several with superstars as NBA teams have been on trading binges looking to add superstars and build superteams. Win-Now approach has revived sign-and-trades.
The increased competition between big market teams looking to win has resulted in a race to sign big time stars that’s seen more superstars and all-star players traded than any time in the league’s history. Trades, including sign-and-trades, have essentiaslly replaced free agency as the favored method for acquiring elite players in the NBA.
A side effect of the competition for stars has been teams wanting to use the non-taxpayer version of the MLE, the BAE, and sign-and-trades to acquire players. All three of these moves automatically hard cap a team. In fact, over half of the teams in the NBA last season were hard capped.
One of the unsung benefits of being hard capped is that you can’t overspend on your own players. While hard cap used to be what everybody avoided, the economic losses due to Covid-19 have made being hard capped as a form of fiscal restraint adoped by teams to force them to be financially sound.
While Jeanie Buss has said the Lakers will do what they have to, you only have to look at the Warriors, who are so far over the cap that adding a $10M per year player would cost them $50M in luxury taxes. In fact, there luxury tax bill will be between $50M and $100M. That’s not a sustainable situation even for a team with great revenues like the Warriors.
Bottom line, the Lakers need to take advantage of both outbound and inbound sign-and-trades to upgrade their starting roster. Otherwise, there is no way they can dramatically improve their roster. This years contenders were much better than last year’s and the competition will only get even better next season. Lakers need to go big, even if it costs them to be hard capped.
https://twitter.com/LakerTom/status/1409914532902834180
It’s a solid tool and one that shouldn’t be wholly ignored. In our case it has to be used judiciously and wisely.
One would think that, in regards to the Lakers current capped out situation and based on the level of talent we could likely S&T for that an argument could be made to simply sign our own free agents and sit tight until December when the contracts become tradeable with zero repercussions. It’s not like the team was struggling pre-injuries, we were rolling.
If we S&T it has to be to bring in an elite player which feels nigh impossible based on our tradable assets (can’t trade Trezz if he doesn’t opt in and agree, which, based on his social media feels unlikely), Schroder would have to be making a mint and might be choosy about where he plays knowing he has a ton of leverage.
At any rate, I hope we use that tool as intelligently as possible. I’m not wholly against running it back with a few tweaks but would be more in favor of S&Ting Schroder into the Knicks cap or something like that as it would create a trade exception we could use at any point in the season. Convincing a small market team to HC themselves isn’t outside the realm of possibility, not sure another mass media market team wants to put the restraints on right when they are ascending again, same as us.
Like we’ve been saying for awhile there are areas that we cannot hard cap ourselves in: training staff, assistant coaches, etc. We need to be an elite team in those areas to be more attractive to guys who we may be asking to take a pay cut to stay.
Thanks for reading and commenting, Jamie.
Obviously, I’m a big fan of the Lakers taking advantage of outbound and inbound sign-and-trades. Sign-and-trades give the Lakers $50 million in additional trading chips for their own free agents and a greatly expanded list of elite targets with respect to other team’s free agents. Need to take advantage of outbound sign-and-trades for sure and probably inbound too.
I think the single biggest mistake the Lakers could make is to go way over the luxury tax threshold by re-signing everybody to new contracts. That could theoretically cost the Lakers as much as $50 million in luxury taxes to re-sign Schroder, Harrell, THT, and Caruso. When you start paying 3 to 5 times in taxes for every player you sign, it’s as paralyzing as being hard capped.
The time for the Lakers to rebuild their starting lineup is in the offseason. Trying to wait until next midseason would be a bad mistake. Teams have so many more options in the offseason. The Lakers in particular will need their draft pick as a sweetener and logically should also include THT, who’s not going to be a major contributor to a LeBron James championship.
Finally, I do think there is something to the idea of the hard cap forcing teams to be more fiscally responsible. The Lakers can fit in one more big contract (like Hield or Beasley or Lowry) and still be able to build out a championship roster with the MLE and vet minimum contracts. Just need to get the right pieces.
Right now, Terance Mann is what the Lakers were hoping THT would be, Reggie Jackson what they hoped Schroder would be, and Zubac what they hoped Drummond would be. Lakers overvalued their role players due to the Bubble Championship. They can’t wait unti the middle of next season to fix this roster, especially the starting lineup that has three player who aren’t good enough to start for a championship team.
I don’t see the Lakers wanting to restrain themselves and I would imagine that the few tools that are available in the regular season ought not to be pooh-poohed away so easily. Dennis Schroder is the perfect example of an offseason everyone thought went right that went wrong in ways nobody could have foreseen. If it’s a true top tier, elite player: bring on the hard cap. If it’s Buddy or Lonzo, thanks but I’ll pass. We can get guys who augment AD and LBJ without the hard cap. We can trade for Buddy straight up, if the Kings want to, Lonzo is a lateral and isn’t the kind of superstar that can run the team if AD and/or Davis goes down again , anyhow.
The first thing we honestly need to get right has nothing to do with the roster. It has to do with boosting our training staff and assistant coaches, especially with at least Kidd finding a head coach gig. We can’t cap out in those areas and my hope is that we see the Lakers lure a solid coach that could step in if they decide not to go with Vogel. Lakers need to get creative in a lot of areas outside of building out the roster.
In short, I can count on one hand the players I would say are worth hard-capping ourselves for and many of them aren’t even likely to be made available over the summer. Thus it stands to reason that going over to sign movable parts makes as much sense as any other path. Hell, even keeping the pick isn’t the worst idea, it’s not like we’re dangling anything close to a lottery pick it’s near the end of the first round. Cost-controlled talent is a must for the Lakers.
Lakers trading chips in no outbound sign-and-trades:
KCP – $13.0M
Kyle Kuzma – $13.0M
Marc Gasol – 2.7M
Assuming Harrell declines player option.
Lakers additional trading chip with outbound sign-and-trades:
Dennis Schroder – $23.0M
Montrezl Harrell – $15.0M
THT – $10.0M
Alex Caruso – $6.0M
…………………..
Lakers targets if no inbound sign-and-trades:
Myles Turner
Buddy Hield
Malik Beasley
Kemba Walker
Lakers targets with inbound sign-and-trades:
Kyle Lowry
Chris Paul
Lonzo Ball
Tim Hardaway, Jr.
John Collins
Jarrett Allen
Nerlens Noel
Norman Powell
Spencer Dinwiddie
Victor Oladipo
Derrick Rose
Richaun Holmes
Kendrick Nunn
Lauri Markkanen
Bobby Portis
TJ McCollum
Reggie Jackson
Terance Mann
Evan Fournier
Kelly Oubre, Jr.
Don’t forget McKinnie who’s deal is NG which could help either open up a shred of space for us or give a team some flexibility (again, just a shred) of their own.
Thanks, Jamie. Guaranteeing his contract could be what we need to consummate a specific trade. Without sign-and-trades, our cupboard is pretty bare.
I don’t think we necessarily need the shackles of the hard cap to restrain us from going too far into the luxury tax. Despite being one of the most valuable franchises in all of sports, we often pinch pennies..many times needlessly and as a detriment to the team. Jeanie ain’t going too deep into the tax.
That’s true, Mongo. I think there’s a psychological advantage to getting hard capped as it does remove pressure to make crazy trades or go deep in the luxury tax. I do agree Jeanie isn’t going to follow the Warriors lead and go deep into the tax period. I do think the expanded target list of whom we can go after if we’re willing to be hardcapped as well as the higher MLE that will be available are too important for us to pass even if it hard caps us and costs us some of our currently overrated depth.
As much as I hate to admit it, the Clippers front office and the role players they signed have been dramatically better than the ones the Lakers signed. Mann and Jackson have been elite. PG has been a superstars. Zubac has played great. Even Beverley has had a huge impact. That’s why we can’t stick with the current roster and run it back. It may have been good enough in the Bubble but not now.
Different roster than what we had in the Bubble. No Green, no Rondo, no Howard and no McGee. Sacrificed “offense” (which turned out to be fool’s gold for banner winning defense. Always felt odd to me, still does.
Letting so many of the young players we drafted and cultivate walk for nothing will have repercussions for several more seasons. Didn’t even get meager draft compensation for the likes of Zubac…so silly.
We had a good run a few years back finding real good dudes late in the draft, might need some of that voodoo back. But let’s be honest, even Laker Haters in the media were saying we won the off-season last year.
Here’s my biggest issue with all these trade scenarios…Kuz, KCP, Dennis, Caruso..they’ve all pretty much hit their ceiling. Teams don’t wanna trade premium assets for that. All those dudes we traded for AD were still on the come-up (and Rich Paul left NO No choice..lol). That’s why teams keep insisting on THT, still has potential. And Trez ain’t opting in to do us any favors. Probably our 3rd best player last year & we jacked him around at the end. Somebody gonna pay him.
Which is exactly why we need to be able to sign-and-trade some of our free agents, including Schroder, Harrell, Horton-Tucker, and Caruso. Otherwise, we have enough trading chips in Kuz, KCP, and #22 to maybe upgrade one starting position.
Like I said, we need a major overhaul but only have assets for an oil change. Bottom line, THT and the picks need to be included. We would have been in much better shape had we included THT and made the Lowry trade.
I agree that we need to shore up 1, 2 & 5. I’ve no objection to S&T, but I’m skeptical that Trezz and Dennis will play ball. Let them go and cut our losses in that case, especially Dennis as I worry that without care he could become our next Luol Deng. I’d sign Dwight Howard to a vet min contract and focus on the guard situation, at 1 & 2 both. Kemba Walker seems a reasonable and attainable choice for 1, so I’d go with that; it will probably cost us Kuzz, KCP and more. (I hope we won’t lose to the Clips in that potential battle.) Then we either keep and further develop THT or S&T him with picks to get a good shoooting guard. Of course, in the unlikely even Dennis & Trezz cooperate with S&T, we can try for Evan Fournier. Rob has his work cut out.
Thanks for reading and posting, Dean. Always appreciate how respectful you are on Twitter so happy to see you finally stopping by and commenting.
There’s really no motivation for Dennis and Trezz to agree to a sign-and-trade so it’s up to Pelinka to find situations where a team without cap space is willing to overpay to trade for Shroder or Harrell … or THT or Caruso.
As for re-signing Dwight, I understand why so many Lakers fans want that but he did not play well for the Sixers in the playoffs and essentially became unplayable as they progressed in the playoffs.
I still think the Lakers had personality reasons for not wanting to re-sign Dwight last offseason and don’t expect that to change this season.
I do think our focus will be on the 1 and 2 rather than center although I could argue that stabliizing the center position – and avoiding the disaster of wasting our MLE on Drummond who’s a terrible fit – should have a higher priority.
I think Kemba is an excellent option and upgrade over Schroder. My only concern is it will surely take both of our key trading chips – Kuz and KCP – to pull off that deal because of matching salaries, which means we likely won’t have trade assets to improve the 2 or 5 other than the MLE. Yes, the Clips may have more pieces to trade for Kemba.
Fournier would be an excellent target and Schroder might be an attractive piece for the Celtics. I would support that move.
I’m not even sure THT’s potential ceiling is enough to to get teams to take Kuz, KCP, or Dennis. But..we gotta try.
It’s at least the equivalent of another first round pick, maybe even a lottery pick. THT & #22 are the sweeteners.