Trade & FA 2023-24: Stein-Ingram Trade Inevitable| LAL Want Lebron Back On Any Terms

[ItsGoTime]

_______.       _____.      McGee
Vandy.           Maxi.        Morris
THJ.              Reggie.      Lawson
Green.           Hardy.       Holiday
Luka.            ______.     Wright

Man I am not all that impressed with that starting 4. Really not sure they are better than the starting 4 we had to start this season. I will say, I hope we know if Kyrie is gonna sign with us at the draft cause one of Wallace or Black might be there at 10 and that could turn out to be much better in the long run. 

I’m going to pencil in Powell for some or all of the Room MLE, so that doesn’t reduce cap space.  We can get to an extra $5mm of space if we move on from Reggie.  How do we spend $30-$35mm?

So, my thought is to use that space to increase our buying power in trade. For example: trade Bullock for Collins giving Atl a good size immediate savings (well TPE to be used how they want) and the full contract off the books next year. Maybe we tip them the 30 SRP or something like that. Getting more players back than outgoing with it, something like Bogdanovich, Stewart and Hayes for Bertans and a FRP. That is how I would spend the space as opposed to looking for 1 player to spend all of it on. I'm not focusing on the specific deals, I'm focusing on being creative with the money.

We may know pretty quickly what the KI thing is going to be if we wake up Wednesday morning after the draft and we held onto #10.  I’m putting Wallace in this spot.  It could obviously be Lively or a wing.  If Vandy is the PF, the C needs to be an outside shooter.  Naz Reid is free, so I’ll go there for something north of $12mm.  Reggie is gone and I need another wing to rotate with Green and THJ.  Give me Grant Williams for $16mm.  Maybe we still have Reggie, maybe we don’t depending on what things cost.

I really like that in a losing Kyrie situation. It gets us a point of attack defender at a spot that they should come from that can drive to the hoop well and just needs to focus on adding a 3 pt shot. Oh, and he's on a rookie scale contract. I like the thought of Black slipping that far a bit better cause we already have plenty 6'4-5" players.

Keeping this in it simplest from, the below is what we have.  We do have 2027 and LA’s 2029 to trade.  We certainly could have traded down and created additional space.  Maybe Powell is a minimum (I’m taking the over) and we use the Room MLE on a PG (Carter?).  Clearly other ways to work around this.  But, is getting a shot at these FA’s an acceptable outcome if Kyrie wants to go?

Naz.       Powell.    McGee
Vandy.    Maxi.      Morris
G. Will.   THJ.       Lawson
Green.    Hardy.    Holiday
Luka.     Wallace.  Wright

While that is an upgrade to last season's squad, and I really like Grant Will as a FA signing (maybe sign him then use the rest of the capspace to get a trade we want via the idea above), it's kinda underwhelming. For sure playoff team, probably a 4-6 seed depending on injuries for us and all teams. I guess what I don't like so much is if Luka goes down, just like last season, we have to hope for a weak stretch in the schedule.

Recall also that if you can live with this for a year, you have 25/27/LA 2029 and expiring THJ and expiring McGee to throw at a team for a star.

We would also have the 31 at that point too.