The Los Angeles Lakers have big plans for the summer of 2018. With Lonzo Ball and Brandon Ingram in place, they have a pair of young and interesting talents as a foundation to build upon in the future. But a slow rebuild isn’t the plan and Ball and Ingram aren’t supposed to be the Lakers’ top stars in the immediate future.
Magic Johnson and Jeannie Buss want stars back in the purple and gold. Johnson has touted that the Lakers plan on making a run at two max contract players in the offseason, although the logistics of making that happen will be wholly dependent on their ability to ship out a significant amount of money at the deadline. If L.A. renounces their rights to all free agents, including restricted free agent Julius Randle, they will have approximately $48 million. That’s not anywhere near max money for two players at any level, much less the veteran max that will be $35 million.
To get there, they would have to unload both Jordan Clarkson and Luol Deng and take back virtually nothing. Considering there are few teams with significant cap space to eat a big contract and none that can take on $30 million alone, that seems nearly impossible. However, L.A. continues on with the dream of landing two marquee names in 2018, with all eyes on Paul George and LeBron James.
Paul George wants to play in L.A. Whether that means this summer or in the future, the current Thunder star has made it clear his love for the Lakers organization and desire to go home to L.A. at some point. He’s the most likely to sign there, and every day the Thunder stumble around in the middle of the pack in the West, the more likely it becomes he signs with the Lakers.
LeBron is a much bigger question mark. Unlike George, James is a player that likes to keep his thought process close to the vest. He’s notorious for it. Neither his decision to leave for Miami or return to Cleveland leaked out prior to when he wanted it to, and no one should expect it to be any different this summer. However, the Lakers hope he’ll be drawn to them for the chance to win a title in L.A., be closer to his budding media empire, and permanently move his family into his new L.A. home.
The problem is James has always shown his decision making about his NBA career is solely about his basketball legacy and winning championships. Without pulling off some tremendous cap gymnastics to land George and LeBron, James would likely have to go it alone as a superstar in L.A., with a young supporting cast and lesser title odds. As ESPN’s Brian Windhorst and Ramona Shelburne wrote, those factors make the Lakers a “longshot” to get James.
So imagining James’ last act coming in purple and gold isn’t without basis. But as of now, it’s also a longshot, according to league sources.
There are a lot of stumbling blocks for the Lakers in signing James, but if there is a silver lining in that, it’s this. There are no teams set up right now to be the perfect landing spot for James, even Cleveland. The Lakers lack other stars, the Rockets lack cap space, the Sixers are intriguing, yet unproven and don’t feature the same location benefits as L.A, and the Cavaliers are approaching a fork in the road regarding their future as a contender in the East, particularly with whether they will want to continue spending as they have.
As Windhorst and Shelburne put it, there’s nothing assured about LeBron’s free agency and all we can do is try to read the tea leaves and look to the past to understand how James’ mind works in these scenarios. Because of that, for the next nearly seven months, LeBron’s impending free agency will remain a storyline always near the top of the NBA fans’ conscience.
