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

Beyond that, I'm pretty firmly in the no category on trading for Giannis. I like him but like several others have detailed, I don't think that gutting things to sign him will work.

 

Some cap analysis because I love this part of the season. Unfortunate I'm not doing only in June as I planned and our season suddenly finished too early

https://lakersnation.com/how-much-cap-space-will-lakers-have-in-summer-of-2026/





In this projection we have 48.5M.
One key thing this summer is to sign long back loaded contracts with the first year being the cheapest, so the increase goes into the aprons and cap increase as we probably won't have cap space again for the foreseeable future. Squeeze those gains as much as is legal

- Ayton triggers the PO for sure, don't see a bigger market for him. I think we try to find a trade for him as soon as we can
- We can sign Smart up to 6.5M without using cap space. Or use the 8M exception. Ideally we convince him to the 6.5 even if it grows the max possible next year. Even if at the cost of a 3rd year PO. Most likely is we use the exception though

Would leave us 47.3M

We are keeping Bronny, no doubt. It would look bad to cut him when Bron leaves and kid deserves it. But we trade the #23 pick, will explain below. It's missing Hayes 4M cap hold that we sign into the 1st apron. I think Kennard walks because his cap hold is high at 13M and I think we try Grimes or Oubre instead. Even Thybulle

We have then 10 players and 46.7M in cap.

Move #1: Sign Watson for ~28M (say 160/5)

Move #2: Sign Ellis for ~10M (33/3 with PO)

Move #3: Sign Grimes for ~8.7M (17/2 with PO and promise of bigger pay next year with bird rights

Move #4: Trade Vando, Knecht and #23 for Terence Mann.

We have now 12 players. We fill the rest with vet min on Landale, Shamet and some new project we find in the draft.

Luka | Smart | Bronny
AR | Mann | Shamet
Ellis | Grimes | 2rd pick
Watson | LaRavia | Thiero
Ayton | Hayes | Landale

Smart, Mann and Grimes is a great backup wing rotation. LaRavia as a 10th guy is great. Maybe we turn Ayton into Bitadze or something like that. Thiero as the 1st guy getting minutes to cover an injury is a great step forward, mainly because that gets him around 50 to 60 games playing ~12 to 15mins average

Defense, shooting, length. All gets bumped with this team. Still good ball handling.
We lose a bit of rebounding, but that's always to happen when losing Bron. Some guys have to step up.
Mann, Grimes and Watson can raise to a bigger role when Luka or AR miss a game. Or in a tough game of one of the two, these guys can get 20pts a game when getting +30min and space to attack. All have playoff experience

A bit of the best case scenario that I can see happening. Names are irrelevant. It can be Oubre Jr, Thybulle, Eason, Herb, Taylor Hendricks, Missi, Gafford, even Claxton, there's plenty of options on the FA and trade market

Prefer this to Giannis

 

Yep on both fronts. Austin is a professional basketball player, that's a lot of money to turn down. Who is is offering that? I mean like seriously?

He can live in LA in the offseason like a lot of other players do. I think the cold stuff is overblown. If he's an Alpha like we think, turning down the opportunity to be the 1st option somewhere isn't some kind of easy no either. You are speaking from a sentimental position bro, I love Austin too, but that's a great opportunity for him, personally and professionally.

 

This is more unrealistic than trading for Giannis and Turner IMO. I appreciate the amount of effort, that you put into these trade scenarios though. Salute