The Waive and Stretch: Lakers Offseason, Upcoming Rookie Extensions, And More
Welcome back to another edition of The Waive and Stretch Newsletter. A quick shameless plug to note that I am looking to work in basketball in any capacity and would love to connect with anyone in the industry or trying to break in. Please feel free to share this Substack with anyone who might find it interesting. Let's get into it!
Available For Consulting
Before getting into the rest of the newsletter, I wanted to take a moment and say that I am available for consulting opportunities for the upcoming offseason. Be it on the team side or representation side, I would love the opportunity to connect and give my insight on whatever situation you may want/need an outside opinion on. Whether it be free agency/extensions/team building/new CBA etc. or just talking the offseason in general, please feel free to email me at thoreson.nichola@gmail.com, or shoot me a text at 608-495-5844!
What Caught My Attention This Week
The Lakers Offseason
With their season coming to an end at the hands of a sweep by the Denver Nuggets, the Los Angeles Lakers head into another offseason filled with key roster-building decisions to be made. The team has the choice between punting on about half their roster (Russell, Beasley, Bamba, Vanderbilt, Hachimura, Walker IV) and carving out about $30 million in cap space to go chase free agents, or they could act as an over-the-cap team. To me, there isn’t even a decision, they should just act as an over-the-cap team and maintain their flexibility. They’ve tried the route of ripping the roster down to the studs to bring in a third star before and it didn’t work, plus $30 million probably wouldn’t get you much this offseason anyway. Once that is decided, they would then have to make some decisions on their free agents.
Austin Reaves
Every report about the Lakers offseason points out that the team is determined to bring back Reaves at all costs. As most know, the Arenas Rule comes into play with Reaves. This means the max amount the Lakers can offer him is 4 years, around $50 or so million. But another team could put in a larger offer sheet, the max offer being 4 years, $100.4 million. This breaks out to the following year-by-year.
2023-2024: $12,220,800
2024-2025: $12,831,840
2025-2026: $36,850,000
2026-2027: 38,508,250
A team would need just over $25.1 million in cap space to make this offer, of which the Rockets, Spurs, Jazz, Pistons, Thunder, and Pacers all project to have. Frankly, I think Reaves is worth that max amount. He averaged 21.3 points a game on 55% shooting from the field in the Western Conference Finals in his second year in the League. Arguably just as impressive, he earned the absolute trust of Lebron James, who surprisingly deferred to Reaves in key moments throughout the playoffs. His EPV is at 19.2% of the cap, which would be $25.7 million in 23-24. Regardless, the most Reaves cap hit would be for the Lakers next year is $12.2 million, helping out LA’s cap sheet in the short term.
Rui Hachimura
Hachimura enjoyed a breakout playoffs with the Lakers and proved to be a pivotal rotation piece for the Lakers, ending up being needed to be on the court in their biggest moments. With this breakout, Rui really elevated his value heading into restricted free agency. He is another player that the Lakers reportedly plan to prioritize this offseason. EPV would peg his value at 4 years ~$54 million. This would be in a simlar range to recent deals for players like Brandon Clarke, Christian Wood and Bobby Portis.
D’Angelo Russell
The Lakers have a tricky situation when it comes to Russell. On the one hand, they gave up assets to bring him in, alongside Jarred Vanderbilt and Malik Beasley, but on the other he couldn’t stay on the court deep into the playoffs. His struggles against the Nuggets (6.3 points per game on 32% shooting) really tanked his value heading into free agency. I had previously predicted a rich deal for Russell coming from the Lakers, but now it seems that amount could halve, if the Lakers want to bring him back. One thing the Lakers need to think about though, if Kyrie Irving were to re-sign on a max deal in Dallas ($46.9 million in 23-24) but were to want to be traded at the deadline, the Lakers would not be able to cobble up enough salary if Russell were to walk. They may need to re-sign him to a deal in the $20+ millions just to act as salary ballast in a future trade.
If the Lakers were to sign Reaves and Hachimura to the aforemention deals, that would put them at around $138.2 million, assuming they opt in Malik Beasley, guarantee Jarred Vanderbilt, and waive Mo Bamba and Shaq Harrison. Tacking on a new D Lo deal plus bringing back Lonnie Walker IV with his Non-Bird Rights would vault the team into the second apron to fill out the roster, just to run it back with this past year’s squad. Performing any sign-and-trade where they would be bringing in a guy like Kyrie Irving or Fred Van Vleet would get very tricky around the hard cap, let alone figuring out a trade that makes sense for all parties. I think the Lakers are destined to running it back with the same squad, and trying to make another upgrade at next year’s trade deadline.
Two Things To Keep An Eye On This Offseason
1. Upcoming Rookie Extension Discussions
As we head into another offseason, we have a new crop of extension eligible players heading into their final rookie-scale contract year. I’ve updated the EPV Values page for every extension eligible first rounder from the 2020 Draft. You can see a screenshot of what it looks like below, with a hypothetical max contract for Anthony Edwards populated to see how it looks once player actually sign deals. Please note this is just some of the players obviously, you can view the rest here.
2. Wizards Hire Their New Head Of Basketball Operations
The Washington Wizards have hired Michael Winger to head up their basketball operations division, with Winger leaving his job with the Clippers to head to DC. Woj also reported that Winger has “full authority to set the course for the Wizards.” It will be interesting to see in what direction the team goes from here. They have some key decisions to make on presumed free agents Kyle Kuzma and Kristaps Porzingis, as well as an extension for Den Avdija. After several lackluster seasons in the nations capital, maybe Winger finally decides to go through a true rebuild and tries to work with Bradley Beal on finding a new destination via trade, despite his no trade clause. There will be several desperate teams out there looking for star talent this offseason, and the Wizards could be smart to unload their talent now while the bidding could get intense.
Fake Signing Of The Week
Player: Austin Reaves
Team: Los Angeles Lakers (via San Antonio Spurs offer sheet)
Deal: 4 Years, $100.4 million
As mentioned previously, this is the absolute most that Reaves could get in an offer sheet from any team, and it would have to come from an outside franchise. I think the Spurs would be a great fit for Reaves and absolutely should thinking about making the Lakers sweat by signing him to a max offer sheet. Ultimately though, it would seem that LA is going to match any offer sheet based on the current reporting. Still, it would definitely worth it to San Antonio on the slight chance that the reports are just posturing and the Lakers wouldn’t actually commit to that type of money for Reaves.