The Los Angeles Lakers continue to do everything in their power to prove to their front office that this team is worthy of a sizeable trade. Having started the season 2-10, they have since gone 17-12 despite injuries to LeBron James and Anthony Davis. In a wide-open Western Conference, there’s every reason to believe that with the right deal, this team could seriously contend for the championship.
But according to ESPN’s Dave McMenamin, the team isn’t thinking exclusively about this season. In an episode of The OD, his YouTube show with Ohm Youngmisuk, he reported that the Lakers are looking for a deal that would offer multi-year benefits. “Getting the right deal that makes them — in their eyes — a better team over the next, like three years, that’s their priority,” McMenamin said. “They want the team to be at the best possible level while LeBron James is still on the roster. But if that means not making that deal in February and playing the rest of this season with whatever group they have and knowing that they have a feeling there’s going to be a better off-season deal in July, that will they do.
In theory, this isn’t necessarily the worst idea. Obviously, a multi-year window is better than a single shot, so adding players who are still in their prime or nearing their prime could offer an advantage beyond this season. Where the plan starts to go sideways is the idea of waiting for a deal.
Obviously, there’s no guarantee James and Davis will be as good next season as they are now. James is 38. He will eventually decline. But even if he doesn’t, there is financial incentive for the Lakers to make a move now.
Along with Russell Westbrook, Patrick Beverley and Kendrick Nunn, they have over $60 million in expiring salaries that would be easy to trade right now. Add in their minimum salary contracts and that number tops $70 million. With so much decaying money at their disposal, they could match the salary to virtually any realistic player or combination of players in the trading market. They would of course have to include draft picks to land someone worthwhile, but they wouldn’t have to worry about making a legit trade from a salary perspective.
Things change this offseason when those contracts expire and the Lakers are expected to be capped around $34 million. That cap would allow the Lakers to sign free agents from other teams, but it would severely limit their ability to trade for high salaries at other teams, simply because $34 million in space is significantly less than $70 million in space are expiring salary. Of course, waiting and working with Cap Space would make it much easier for the Lakers to reset their luxury tax clock and avoid repeat tax next season, which could also motivate a decision to wait.
By making a trade now and including players with longer-term contracts or contracts that the team expected to renew during the offseason, the Lakers would put themselves in a position to pay that repeat tax. If they chose to sign free agents rather than improve through the trade market, they might as well hold on to their first-round picks in 2027 and 2029 rather than sell them. They could theoretically move those picks later, but with a lower matching salary available to them, their ability to strike a legal trade for an expensive player or group of players would be more complicated.
At this point, no deal seems imminent. A lot can still change before deadline, but all signs continue to point to the Lakers not making a big move by deadline. Barring a no-brainer with multi-year upside potential, the Lakers appear content to weather a disappointing season.