Los Angeles Lakers: Complete grades for the 2019 NBA offseason
Re-signed Alex Caruso
If Rajon Rondo starts at point guard for the Los Angeles Lakers next season it will be as an inverse of salary, because the Lakers handed out more money to bring back Alex Caruso (and to sign Quinn Cook) than to bring back Rondo.
In Caruso the team can grasp at a semblance of upside at the position.
FiveThirtyEight’s CARMELO player projections back this up, as they predict Rondo to be a substantial negative at the position but Caruso to be worth a fair bit more than his salary.
If Caruso can play well over the next two seasons he could hit the market as a desirable commodity at the point.
The 25-year old guard out of Texas A&M has floated around the Lakers for the past two seasons, appearing in 37 games as a rookie and 25 a year ago. Last season he raised his game in every way, improving in every major counting stat and shooting percentage.
Perhaps most valuable to this roster, he shot 48 percent from 3-point range (albeit on a meager 50 attempts).
A Caruso who can shoot, handle occasionally and not get killed on defense is probably the starter on this team by the end of the season, no matter Rondo’s pedigree.
He may be able to do more than “not get killed” on defense, as he joins LeBron James and JaVale McGee as the only returning Lakers to have a positive defensive impact according to Jacob Goldstein’s Player-Impact Plus-Minus.
Locking Caruso up for multiple years is a low-cost path to keep some young(er) talent around, as the team did with Kyle Kuzma and no one else. The best lineup for this team probably does not contain Caruso, but at $2.75 million he is not being paid to close.