2026-27 Team Developments: Trades / Free Agents / News / Rumors / Ideas

Who could we hope for?

My opinion is like Love would be nice. DeRozen would be flashy, but yeah...I truthfully wasn't confident if he fit right or not. AGAIN, still curious of C Bags and PG...like do they truly see him as useful for a couple more seasons or do they dip to add others? I don't think PG would be amazing on our team, but as a Vet in the Locker Room, he might be worth it. I am not sure who else works in our situation.

It'd be nice to have a guy that like COULD score 20, if he got lucky, but like really, comes off the bench and hits some 3s and then goes back to the Bench. Then the rest of the season just motivates and instructs and helps the others learn and what not.

 

i imagine kenrich williams is being sought for this role. hell, we could start him right now lol.

 

Yeah I’m not sure who else is a realistic veteran buyout candidate. Maybe the target won’t shake loose until mid-season.

To be clear though while I don’t think DeRozan is an ideal fit, yeah we could use him as a third shot creator for when Luka/AR are slumping or missing time due to injury. If DeRozan became available at the minimum, that would be a home run signing.

One positive wrinkle to Lebron leaving is that we can disregard that rumor of Kevin Love being a lock to sign with us. Especially with our current roster, I don’t think we can afford to waste a roster spot on someone like him who would essentially solely be playing the Jared Dudley role and not someone we could actually rely on to produce at this stage of his career

 

i mentioned this a couple times. my guess is we're pursuing kuminga first, but if the market dries up, it actually makes a lot of sense for both sides, imo.

is rui the ideal fit? nope. but he's a solid nba player, and we know him and he knows us (well, the few remaining guys).

i can't find a good list of who has what money left, but if i knew that, i'd know better how to think about what we'll do next.

 

Would you prefer a PF rotation of

Mamu / Vando

over

Rui / Mamu

?

To be honest, I don’t know if the answer to that question is super clear even in my eyes. I could see the argument that given our current roster construction we may need Vando’s defense/size and shouldn’t necessarily treat his contract as completely expendable. Especially when you consider the long term consequences of stretching him (I don’t think that would be too big of a deal since we probably won’t be a cap space team again anytime soon, but still some extra money on the books for several years for stretching Vando can limit apron flexibility)

 

i think jj's shown he has no interest in vando being part of the main plan, so i'd go rui/mamu.

kuminga/mamu would be amazing. like A+ offseason, imo.

 

Vando won't see the floor unless injuries or JJ is ejected (think his stress is going to be high this year, so there might be a few of those).

I think there's even a lesser chance of him playing with this group than last year's group.


Kuminga needs to be the target (never thought that phrase would even be typed by me) based on what's currently left because he is the closest to being qualified as a young, athletic, starter-ish player.

But yeah, if that's a no go then I guess Rui for a ROI on investment because he is talented just not a great fit.

 

i agree it's a last resort type thing. if it's a one-year contract, i like it because we'd have his bird rights, which means if we were to trade him the team that gets him would have those, too. why does it matter? with so many teams operating over the cap, bird rights on role players might have more importance.

again, still holding out hope for kuminga or some trade for a more defensively-oriented forward.

but rui ending up back here wouldn't be the worst thing to me. i just didn't want to be spending 18 million+ per on him again.

 

i need to hear more about this jaylen brown trade, as it seems utterly insane. it's almost as bad as the luka trade; could be worse if you consider that there was basically open bidding on this one.

 

Yeah in theory based on physical profile and skillset, Kuminga would be the best fit

But if that’s not viable, I think bringing back Rui at whatever contract we could realistically get him for (I’d imagine somewhere in the $8-12 million range at most), I think that’s too good a value to pass up even if there are fit issues. Plus I simply like the guy and think some continuity in the locker room would be beneficial.

I do that even if it’s a longer term 2-3 year deal. In fact I think that would be preferable. I think opposing teams would have more trade interest in Rui if they knew they had him under a cost controlled team friendly deal for multiple years rather than him being on a one year expiring and you risk that he earns himself a big pay increase the following season.

I do think Rui has more value around the league than $10 million range, the market this off season just shook out in an unfavorable manner for him.

 

Well we have interest in Kaminga. Let’s get it done. And then that should finish a great off-season.

 

My worry is that the C Bags take the two extra picks from this Brown trade and now trade for Murphy.

 

So, I might be on this hill by myself, I don't hate keeping LaRavia for now. Dalton and Bronny should be traded together to wherever LeBron goes, and we should try and get some picks from that. (I know or figure they will be 2nds, and that's fine for now.)

I think we HAVE to keep Ayton because of our slight "lack" at C. So, Vando seems like the easiest cut. With that, I feel like that means Kuminga must be the main shot in that situation.....but I really do hope for Rui come back still.

Anyways, that's just my opinion.

 

https://www.hoopsrumors.com/2024/12/what-each-nba-team-can-cant-do-on-the-trade-market.html

i haven't seen anyone mention this, but i feel like the bolded above is another route.

like, could we get kuminga 17.5 by sending out knecht and laravia (combine to make 10). maybe a third team who did nothing with their space would take them for whatever we've got left (a second or a swap?). i actually don't think one year of laravia or knecht is the worst thing in the world. could even see a 4-teamer where each guy is routed to different teams, atlanta just gets a TE.

 

they still have that huge TE that can fit murphy. and they had picks before. they could have had both!

 

That would be the most hilarious rejection of all time

but the Lakers are all class. No way they do that.