by Paul Teetor
LeBron James didn’t say a word.
He didn’t need to.
The pictures on his Instagram Story said it all.
There they were: mugshots of every player the Lakers had just signed in the first 48 hours of free agency.
The league-wide fast break began Friday afternoon at 3 p.m. with the biggest names on the market – Kyrie Irving, James Harden, and Draymond Green – all ending the suspense quickly by re-signing with the Mavericks, the Sixers, and the Warriors, respectively.
Then the Lakers went to work, signing six players in the next 24 hours.
As of Tuesday the fourth of July, LeBron still hasn’t said publicly that he is definitely coming back next season despite his serious doubts about doing exactly that in the immediate aftermath of the Denver Nuggets four-game sweep of the Lakers in the Western Conference Finals.
But posting those player pictures clearly implied that he approved of General Manager Rob Pelinka’s free agency moves as the NBA entered its annual yard sale of players looking for the best possible deal for now, for themselves, for their families and for their futures.
Until LeBron actually issues his stamp of approval, let’s take a closer look at the Lakers roster as it is now set in place for next season, with 14 of the 15 roster spots filled.
But before we do that, let’s say happy trails to the one that got away, gritty point guard Dennis Schroder. In his second stint with the Lakers last season, the 6-foot-1, 170-pound German guard hit big shot after big shot, especially in the playoffs, and was their best back-court defender. By the end of their playoff run he had replaced D’Angelo Russell as the starter at point guard because he was so much more effective against the Nuggets All-Star backcourt.
And he was the only Laker to stand up to the bullying tactics used by Golden State thug Draymond Green in games 4 and 5 of their semifinal series. LeBron and Anthony Davis, apparently because of their alleged “friendship” with Green, were reluctant to get in his face and tell him to back off. So Schroder stepped up and did the dirty deed.
With Green neutralized, the Lakers won game six in a blowout to take the series four game to two behind Davis and James.
About 12 hours after free agency started, the Lakers announced they had re-signed Russell to a two-year, $37 million deal, which effectively forced Schroder to look elsewhere for a team that would pay him fair market value.
And he quickly found one in the Toronto Raptors, who gave him a two-year, $26 million deal. They needed someone like him because their own free agent point guard, Fred Van Vleet, had just signed a three-year, $130 million deal with the Houston Rockets.
The Van Vleet deal felt like a severe overpay, but that kind of thing can happen in a crazy market where pieces are moving off the board quickly and teams and players have different agendas at different times and quickly changing amounts of money to spend.
Bottom line: in this case the Lakers were the victims of the Houston overpay because it instantly created Toronto’s need for someone like Schroder.
But the puzzling part of the whole unfortunate chain of events is that the Lakers could have, and should have, averted it from the start.
They could have opened free agency by simply taking the money they used to re-sign Russell and instead used it to compensate Schroder fairly.
Now, Russell has the superior numbers — 17 points and five assists per game during his two-month Lakers stint – but he’s a terrible defender and plays with no heart. Schroder was a great defender despite his small size and played with more heart than anyone on the team not named LeBron.
But he’s gone now, and good luck in Toronto – he’s going to need it.
That said, All Ball salutes Pelinka for locking up the two most important of the Lakers restricted free agents – Reaves and Hachimura.
Bringing Reaves back at bargain numbers — $56 million over four years – was particularly impressive because it could have ended up costing the Lakers twice as much.
Because Hillbilly Kobe was an undrafted player who became a star in his first two years, he was now a free agent who was sure to command more than $100 million on the open market. The NBA has a crazy, convoluted salary cap whose rules and regulations run to more than 30 pages, but the bottom line was this: The Lakers could offer him no more than $56 million while any other team in the league could offer him up to $104 million over four years.
The catch is that the Lakers retained the right to match any contract he signed with another team. But doing so would have prevented them from spending that extra $50 million on other players they desperately wanted.
Before free agency ever started, the Lakers made it clear to other teams around the league that they intended to match any contract Reaves signed with another team. So that opened the distinct possibility that some other team with a bad-news owner – like Dallas with Mark Cuban or Sacramento with Vivek Ranadive – would sign Reaves to a maximum offer sheet just to force the Lakers into spending all that extra money on Reaves.
The other half of that equation, of course, is that Reaves would have to go out and seek a contract from a new team with a trouble-making owner and GM. Now, there are plenty of selfish players who would have done exactly that if they were in Reaves’ position.
But Reaves is a country boy who has always been extremely grateful that the Lakers took a chance on him when no one else wanted him, brought him into their training camp, and developed him into a player who by the end of the playoffs was clearly the Lakers’ third best player. So after 12 hours of silence, the Lakers announced Saturday afternoon that they had signed Reaves and he would be with them for the next four years.
All Ball has no idea what was said behind closed doors, but you can bet that Pelinka made clear to Reaves and his agents that when the time came in a few years, he would get another, much bigger pay day that would make up the difference between what he is getting paid now and what he is actually worth.
The Lakers’ other big coup was bringing back Hachimura on a three-year, $51 million deal. A Washington Wizards lottery draft pick back in 2019 who never really panned out, the 6-foot-8 Hachimura had everything you could want in a modern NBA player – size, skill and speed – but he couldn’t find a groove on the dysfunctional Wizards.
So Pelinka traded for him in January for little-used guard Kendrick Nunn and a couple of draft picks, and the Lakers immediately handed him to assistant coach Phil Handy, a noted whiz at diagnosing and fixing what is wrong with a player’s game.
By the time the playoffs rolled around, Hachimura was drilling three-point shots at a more than 40 percent clip, pounding the boards hard, and playing lock-down defense. He took his game up yet another level in the playoffs, and suddenly he went from a guy in danger of washing out of the league with the word BUST stamped on his forehead to a player on the league’s flagship franchise now making $17 million a year. America, she is a wonderful country.
The other big catch for Pelinka was Miami Heat point guard Gabe Vincent. Undrafted four years ago out of Fresno State, the Heat developed Vincent into a tough, gritty defender who can get red hot and nail a bunch of three pointers in a row. He improved so much that he was the starting point guard for the Heat this season and was a key factor in their playoff run all the way to the NBA Finals. It was a bit of a shock that he left the Heat for a 3-year, $33 million contract with the Lakers, but congrats to Pelinka for pulling off such a coup.
Two other players the Lakers signed for next season – Cam Reddish and Jaxson Hayes – both fit the Hachimura profile: former lottery picks who didn’t meet expectations but still have a lot of talent and upside just waiting to be developed by the right set of coaches.
In Head Coach Darvin Ham and his staff, Pelinka believes they have the people in place to improve these players and maximize their considerable talents.
There’s only one thing missing from this lovefest: the official stamp of approval from LeBron.
But it’s coming.
And we’ve got the pictures to prove it.
Contact: teetor.paul@gmail.com. Follow: @paulteetor
