In this excerpt from The Hoop Collective, Tim Bontemps explains why he believes LeBron James agreeing to a contract extension with the Los Angeles Lakers creates a scenario LA will need to trade Russell Westbrook to improve the roster in the future.
“[The Lakers] could have manipulated things around, got a max free agent, resigned LeBron, had two guys and AD and moved forward that team,” Bontemps said.
“Now, to me what this sets up is the Lakers have to trade Russell Westbrook because when LeBron was unsigned, they at least had the ability to say ‘We can ride this out with Russ, we don’t have to trade these picks, we could go to next summer we’ll have a ton of cap space, we could figure it out.’
“Now, because LeBron has signed this extension, even if the Lakers don’t trade Russ, with AD and LeBron on the books and then dead cat roster holds because they have nobody on the roster, the Lakers are only going to have enough money maybe they’ll have $20-25 million. So they’re not gonna have enough money to sign one of those max guys.
“So, to me they have to use this Westbrook contract and one of two of these picks to get the team better now because that’s the only viable path they have to really improve in this team over the next couple years because otherwise it’s literally just going to be AD, LeBron and a bunch of minimums and that’s not going to be good enough.
“And maybe that’s really what the Lakers were saying. They were saying ‘If you commit to us, it makes our path easier. So now we know we do trade Russ and we’re willing to include one or both of these picks somewhere along the way.'”
