The Los Angeles Lakers are fresh off a championship and are gearing up for another. These are the franchise’s three best contracts.
The Los Angeles Lakers might be fresh off a championship but they wasted no time upgrading their roster. Teams that remain content usually don’t repeat as champions and the Lakers look primed to compete for another.
The Lakers have the luxury of being able to build a roster around two of the ten best players in the league. It becomes infinitely easier to fill out the rest of your roster when you employ Anthony Davis and LeBron James.
When looking at the best and worst teams in the league, one thing stands out above all else. The good teams have a lot of good contracts and the bad teams have a lot of bad contracts. Building a contender isn’t rocket science but that doesn’t mean it is easy.
What makes a contract good? The three biggest factors that matter to NBA general managers in order are production, cost and age. Production and age are self-explanatory but cost is two-fold. So this could easily be four factors, but cost is determined by how much you are paid and for how long.
The best contracts are cheap, long, and tied to a productive young player. As players get older, the shorter the contract the better in most general managers’ eyes. Finally, how easily a contract can be moved, especially for non-superstars, goes a long way in determining its value around the league. While this is similar to cost, it gives a bonus to contracts that can be easily fit into every team because that means more suitors which means more value. Good players are sometimes on contracts that are difficult to move which hurts the contract’s value.
For example, Khris Middleton is a fantastic player and every team would love to have him, but how many can fit his $33 million salary into their plans without surrendering a lot of real talent? Most teams would be interested but not many could actually make the deal happen, which drives down his value, although not dramatically.
Without further ado let’s take a look at the Lakers’ three best contracts that have them primed to compete for title number 18 and perhaps more to come.