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With the official opening of NBA free agency just days away, we inch closer to the point where we can better understand what next season’s Lakers will look like.
We already know that Austin Reaves will return, but beyond bringing him back on a max contract, President of Basketball Operations Rob Pelinka and this Lakers front office has much work to do in building out a roster that can fulfill the promise of putting a championship-level group around Luka Dončić.
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Depending on who you ask, the team’s most pressing priorities range from upgrading the team’s starting center to determining what will happen with LeBron James to finding a younger, defensive-minded wing who could slot between Dončić and Reaves. All, of course, are super important and, when considering these are just priorities and not all that needs to happen, only reinforce the amount of work left to build out the team.
Many of the Lakers top targets are well known and heavily reported on already. The point of this discussion isn’t to dive into all of those names now, but rather to look at a (mostly) different crop of names.
More specifically, players whose contract status is more liquid, either in the form of player options, team options, or, in one case, a restricted free agent who could end up being renounced and suddenly be thrust into the general free agent market to be signed by anyone.
Without further ado, then, here are five possible free agents whom the Lakers should be keeping tabs on and/or who could greatly impact the team’s pathway towards building out a contender this summer.
Okay, I’m going to cheat right out of the gate and name one of the Lakers’ own potential free agents.
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Ayton’s player option of $8.1 million for next season isn’t some huge number that dramatically impacts the team’s cap space in either direction, so the potential impacts don’t have much to do with money on the open market.
Instead, this is about the ability to include Ayton in a trade, in which case he could be aggregated with additional players to both enhance an offer from a positional and talent perspective while also…
Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/articles/5-free-agent-decisions-lakers-170627078.html
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Publish date : 2026-06-27 17:06:00
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