Los Angeles Lakers: What to do with Luol Deng’s contract?
A large part of the Los Angeles Lakers opening up maximum cap space will be their handling of Luol Deng’s contract, including partnering him with a promising young player to offload the salary.
Teams throughout the NBA are still dealing with the repercussions of wildly dishing out money in the summer of 2016 cap boom. The salary cap rose due to an influx of TV money that was shared among all 30 franchises, with teams expecting it to escalate over the next couple seasons. However, these numbers didn’t rise as expected, leaving teams that splashed out the cash cap-tied for a couple seasons.
The Los Angeles Lakers are one of those teams after using their cap space to sign a pair of veterans well past their prime to a pair of four-year deals in Timofey Mozgov ($64 million) and Luol Deng ($72 million). These contracts limited the Lakers’ advances in pursuing other free agents, forcing them to get creative in creating cap space for the present.
The first of these moves came when the Lakers had to pair Mozgov with former No. 2 overall pick D’Angelo Russell in a trade package with the Brooklyn Nets last offseason. Now Russell hasn’t been the standout player a franchise would’ve liked when selecting No. 2, but to offload the awful Mozgov contract required parting ways with a player pegged to lead the Lakers franchise in the post-Kobe Bryant era.
Fast forward to the present and the Lakers find themselves in a similar situation with Deng’s contract, which has two years and upwards to $36 million guaranteed left. Deng played one game despite being healthy all season. The team is in a much better cap situation with only one player on the books for the 2018-19 season not on their rookie deal besides Deng and Tyler Ennis, who is owed just $1.6 million for the upcoming campaign.
It’s no secret the Lakers are trying to maximize their cap space and pursue plenty of big names this offseason, or in 2019, and finding somebody to take on Luol Deng’s remaining years is a key to executing that strategy. This may mean parting ways with another high draft pick like the Mozgov-Russell package — something that I would not like to see them do.
As I mentioned briefly, Russell’s departure made sense as the Lakers were preparing to draft another lead guard in Lonzo Ball with their own No. 2 pick in the 2017 NBA Draft. But trading any of this Lakers core — such as Brandon Ingram — to get rid of Deng would not be a risk worth taking.
It’s no guarantee the Lakers are going to sign LeBron James or Paul George or any of the big names in this summer’s free agency pool. So why take the chance of losing Ingram just to offload a contract that could be stretched over two or three seasons and have limited impact on their salary cap flexibility in the near future?
Stretching contracts is the ability to literally stretch out a player’s cap figure over multiple seasons at a reduced figure. For example, if the Lakers waived and stretched Luol Deng before Aug. 31, “his remaining contract is paid over twice the number of years of his contract, plus one,” according to HoopsRumors.com. This plan of action would keep Deng on their books for a reduced figure and present them more wiggle room to build their team.
There’s also the fact that Brandon Ingram made great strides in his game this season and is the youngest player on a Los Angeles Lakers core aiming to build something special for a decade or longer. Sacrificing their most integral part of said core for a chance to sign free agents and compete with the juggernaut Golden State Warriors in the short-term is not worth shedding Deng’s contract when there are creative ways to fix his contract situation.
Who knows what the Los Angeles Lakers will do this offseason? I, for one, hope they maintain their core and keep the long-term picture at the forefront, especially with the looming dominance of the Golden State Warriors still prevalent.
If they decide to hold onto Deng for the upcoming season, trading him in his final year of his contract in 2019 is much easier and may even be attractive in trade negotiations as teams covet these one-year deals to ensure future cap space. Keeping Ingram, Lonzo and the rest of their core is more important than shedding Deng’s contract, especially with how many players the Lakers have on rookie deals and how much cap space the team already has.
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Luol Deng isn’t a factor on the court, and people won’t feel bad for a player who just made $18 million to appear in 13 minutes all season. But there needs to be a veteran presence in the locker room, and not many players are more professional than Deng. His contract is among the many storylines to follow with the Lakers this offseason.