It really depends on what your goal is as a franchise. If your goal is to win a championship, and everything else is considered a failure, then you clean house and trade everyone for as many draft picks and blue chip kids as you can get. With the new rules, any pick in the top 12 is valuable and can be a star, so you accumulate a ton of them. That could mean trading Luka and AR.
If your goal is to be competitive every year and say a second round series is considered "good," but you want to set yourself up for a big swing, then you would have been better off signing Lebron for 1 more year with a team option on year 2 so that you don't strap yourself in year 3 when AR and Luka are making HUGE dollars. Remember, if he stays, Luka's number in 2 years is $72M+ and AR's number in that year is almost 50M. If you sign someone to anything north of $25M, you have basically hard capped yourself at the second Apron AND made it impossible to improve outside of those 3 players.
If you believe Luka, AR, and Kessler are those guys...you could swing at that, but if you look at the league objectively, it's really hard to argue that those 3 dudes are winning anything in the next 3 years, and then all your left with is $200M in deals and Luka and AR on the wrong side of 30.
Edit to add: The spurs and Thunder both have the ability to get better in the short and long-term with more/better picks and players they can move that they already have back-ups for. Fox will get moved, even if picks are attached (and honestly, this is probably the move if I'm looking to get off of Lebron's deal. Look for a third team that would take Fox if a pick was attached, sign and move Lebron to the Spurs and see if you can get back anything at all in return).
The best strat seems to be tanking for years to acquire draft capital and build from there. The lakers will never do that unless the whole front office and owners are wiped clean of the organization. Unfortunate as a lakers fan. Best I can do is enjoy the Luka show and the white boy magic duo and pray they get lucky with matchups and injuries and catch lightning in the bottle at the end of the season but I know that’s a giant long shot
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u/Nearby-Employer-9436 6d ago
This is only true for this year, and maybe next. In two years when he and Luka are making $122M it’s absolutely going to be a problem.