Sad to say, I think Shams or someone pulling his words out of context is playing semantics games to click-bait.
USING EARLY BIRD RIGHTS, the Lakers can only OFFER a deal that starts at "105% of average salary", which with max raises is about $50.8M over 4 years.
USING CAP ROOM they could OFFER a deal starting at a higher number.
But -- they can MATCH (using EB rights and Arenas rules) anything another team offers, and the biggest possible offer by another team would be 4 years 92M (with some potentially nasty payroll jumps in there that makes it a hard deal to offer, but an easy deal to match with LA getting to choose how the cap hit looks if matched).
There is a truth that LA may be concerned that the offers may be more than they PREFER to have to pay, based on Reaves playing well and upping his potential offers, but there's no scenario in which they are kept from the ability to match using RFA rights.
USING EARLY BIRD RIGHTS, the Lakers can only OFFER a deal that starts at "105% of average salary", which with max raises is about $50.8M over 4 years.
USING CAP ROOM they could OFFER a deal starting at a higher number.
But -- they can MATCH (using EB rights and Arenas rules) anything another team offers, and the biggest possible offer by another team would be 4 years 92M (with some potentially nasty payroll jumps in there that makes it a hard deal to offer, but an easy deal to match with LA getting to choose how the cap hit looks if matched).
There is a truth that LA may be concerned that the offers may be more than they PREFER to have to pay, based on Reaves playing well and upping his potential offers, but there's no scenario in which they are kept from the ability to match using RFA rights.