Last summer, the NBA was already in the midst of a massive paradigm shift. Many organizations were feeling the consequences in their pocketbooks after the 2016 free agency extravaganza, and as a result, the market has grown increasingly conservative.
The Los Angeles Lakers certainly were not immune to the allure of a big money influx from the league’s television deals and were among several franchises that imprudently doled out enormous contracts (Timofey Mozgov, Luol Deng) that inevitably came back to haunt them.
Those decisions definitely played a part in former GM Mitch Kupchak’s ouster, and the franchise’s new head executive, Magic Johnson, is proceeding with considerably more caution, even as he’s forced to juggle the antithetical goal of trying to land one or more of the biggest name free agents set to hit the market when free agency begins on July 1.
"We're not going to give money away just to say we signed someone," Magic Johnson says.
— Tania Ganguli (@taniaganguli) April 13, 2018
Both Paul George and LeBron James have been linked to L.A., whether through rumor, speculation, educated guess or, in George’s case, his own admission, and Johnson has made no secret that he plans to aggressively pursue George this offseason (almost to the point of tampering).
George’s future, however, will depend in large part on how well or poorly OKC fares in the playoffs. LeBron, on the other hand, remains an enigma. The Lakers rightly believe they’ll have a better shot at him if they can convince George to sign, and after shedding some of those aforementioned contracts, they’ll also have salary cap flexibility on their side.
Johnson’s comments clearly refer more to secondary and tertiary deals, so on the one hand, it makes sense that he’ll try to avoid past mistakes, but that doesn’t mean he won’t be swinging for the fences when it comes to PG and LeBron.
