2025-26 Team Developments: Trades / Free Agents / News / Rumors / Ideas

i think there's a sub-title ceiling on luka/41 year old lebron/AR as the engine, but i agree that if we had two more rotation players--one starting, one bench--who fit our needs, we're probably the 3-seed in the west and someone you're not excited to play.

but again, i don't see how we get those two players with what we have to offer.

edit: regarding losing lebron's talent--that's a real issue, but it was always going to happen. having it coincide with a time where we'll have 40+ million in cap space is your best chance at not suffering a catastrophic loss when he leaves/retires/suffers the career-ending injury. so anything that jeopardizes that...you just have to nail it. concerns me.

 

With this roster, the formula for success this year had to be dominant offense (Top 3 minimum) and middling defense (Top 15ish) that could get timely stops in high leverage moments. And at the beginning of the season we were seeing some of that! But we just don't have the depth to sustain anything close to that if guys are out, or if Luka isn't playing at his very best.

I think there's still a version of this season where Austin comes back, LeBron stays relatively healthy, those three guys gel into a dominant offense and all of a sudden we're an extremely tough out in the playoffs. Not a championship ceiling, but maybe a WCF if the matchups break right. But that would require everyone getting and staying healthy for the rest of the season and that doesn't really happen for anyone, not just us.

 

other elephant in the room is that lebron's unlikely to make it all year and through the playoffs. much like kawhi. clips are a feelgood story right now because kawhi has played at an all-nba level for 15 games in a row for the first time in like, 5 years.

 

interesting that sac was willing to move ellis just to get off derozan's partial guarantee. i'm sure that's not our price, but...

 

Especially if we do nothing now!! If we wait, the whole league will see that and figure they can skrew us when the time comes.

 

Agreed. It would make sense to me that our team build around Luka and AR would be similar to what Dallas did around Luka. At least we know that Austin and Luka can play together. I’m not sold on Ayton as our Center, due to his spans of lack of focus, but would be okay bringing him back on a reasonable deal if we don’t have a clear path to an upgrade this summer.