With the Los Angeles Lakers hoping to shed cap room before the upcoming free agency period, it’s time to make the case for the Lakers keeping their roster intact and building around their current group.
Most of the discussion about the Los Angeles Lakers this season has been centered around Lonzo Ball’s rookie year and the 2018 summer, where the Lakers will look for a quick rebuild by luring a couple of big-time free agents to join their young players such as Lonzo, Brandon Ingram and Kyle Kuzma.
The flashes these young players have shown this season are encouraging, but this team has been out of the playoff picture since early December. This will be the Lakers’ fifth consecutive postseason miss, the longest streak in franchise history. So it’s fair to see why they take the short-term approach by shopping players like Jordan Clarkson and Julius Randle with zero success in half a decade.
But before they land a meeting with free agents this summer, the Lakers need to open up cap space. To do so, they’ve been discussing trading the aforementioned Clarkson and Randle in return for expiring contracts and/or draft picks.
Clarkson is in the second year of a four-year, $50 million contract, and since Randle and the Lakers failed to agree on an extension, he’ll be a restricted free agent this summer.
They have yet to find a suitable trade partner given Clarkson’s contract and the lack of playoff teams needing guards, while Randle’s ensuing restricted free agency complicates matters.
Despite continuously hearing their names in trade rumors, Clarkson and Randle have subsequently been playing some of the best basketball of their short careers over the past month, with the Lakers going 7-2 over the last nine games.
When factoring in the trade market, the state of the Lakers and the state of the NBA as a whole, I am starting to believe the Lakers should keep this roster intact through the Feb. 8 trade deadline. I’ll present my three specific reasons for this case, beginning with the expectations of bringing in two maximum contract players this offseason.