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burninmylight on 30 July 2021
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Machiavellian said:
Chris Hu said:

Since the Lakers got Russ they will at least go to the WCF next season. Golden State still has more pieces to eventually have a much better roster then the Lakers. Looks like Ben Simmons is staying with the 76ers since they want the moon for him from other teams. I think Pascal Siakam is available that is who the Warriors should go after.

Russ and LB, I do not know about that combination.  I am definitely interested to see how this will work out because you can only have one main ball handler.  I will say during the Cleveland run, LB did defer the ball to Kyrie and the speed that Russ brings to fast breaks should open up a lot of easy baskets for the Lakers bigs like AD and LB.  The one area that the Lakers still lack is outside consistent shooting which can be an issue against GS,

The Lakers just traded away their best perimeter defenders to get him, not to mention that Schroeder is likely gone and Matthews is up in the air. The trade will put LAL further over the hard cap, with the only way to improve via free agency being their non-taxpayer mid-level exception (they were actually under the cap during the championship run last year because they created enough space for two max-level roster spots, but only got one in Anthony Davis). So outside of that 9.536 million to play with, LAL can only sign veterans to the NBA minimum salary.

https://www.spotrac.com/nba/los-angeles-lakers/cap/

Granted, it's the Lakers, so I wouldn't be surprised to see some aged ring chasers sign on for cheap. With it being so early into the offseason, before trades can become official and free agency having not even begun, I think we should probably hold off on declaring where teams will end up in the playoff picture.

Last edited by burninmylight - on 30 July 2021