Just before the Lakers started the match against the Dallas Mavericks on Christmas Day, we received a special Woj Bomb from ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski, who reports that the Lakers and current titleholder Dennis Schröder have been talking about an extension of the contract, although Schröder has late Lakers initial offer.
The Los Angeles Lakers began to engage with incumbent owner Dennis Schroder in contract extension negotiations, and those discussions are expected to resume in mid-February, sources told ESPN.
Before the start of the season, Schroder declined an initial offer from the Lakers to extend his contract for another two years and $ 33.4 million, the sources said – an opening that represented the maximum allowable offer the Lakers could make to him before 16 of February.
However, it appears that Schröder basically declined that offer because the Lakers can offer more from 16 February and can continue to do so until the beginning of the 2021 off-season.
The Lakers can offer a starting salary of $ 18.6 million starting in the 2021-2022 season, which creates a much more realistic opportunity for the Lakers, Schroder and their agent, Alex Saratsis, to find a point of arrival in an extension of market value with the Lakers.
If there is no agreement before the off-season, the Lakers had Schroder’s bird rights to pass the salary cap when hiring him again. Losing Schroder at the free agency would leave the Lakers limited to replace him, because they would have only a $ 9.5 million mid-level exception available for use at the free agency.
That would be an expensive extension, but it makes sense for the same reasons as giving Kyle Kuzma a $ 40 million extension for three years: Because the Lakers have already invested in Schröder, because they cannot easily replace him and because they are basically spent anyway.
When the Lakers extended LeBron James and Anthony Davis before the training camp, they detonated any chance they had of a significant limit until at least the summer of 2023. And that is not a bad thing! Having LeBron and AD playing voluntarily for their team is a great thing, even if it’s expensive. The side effect of this, however, is that the Lakers will not have space under the salary cap to offer much to players for whom they do not have Bird rights, making it difficult to replace outgoing taxpayers. With Kuzma, that meant giving him an extension the size of an initiator, and it could cost even more to keep Schröder, his current initiator.
And just like Kuzma – that the Lakers invested development resources, recognition time and draft choice – the Lakers also gave up real assets to bring Schröder to Los Angeles, as he cost them the choice of the 2020 draft and Danny Green. And even if you don’t like the latter’s game, at the very least you had a contract that was a ballast of easy salary for a large acquisition. If the Lakers give up and Schröder leaves – and, as Woj describes it, they only have about half the money to replace him that he’s looking for in a free agent market that won’t be short of teams with ample space – then they won ‘ Don’t be able to get close to finding a player of your caliber. Schröder and his team know this clearly, which is the main reason for declining the Lakers’ initial offer, and the team is theoretically able to offer more later.
So for now, it looks like this is a waiting game. And the Lakers will also have to see how Schröder continues to play. If he were to hypothetically play until February, looking like a bad fit alongside James and Davis, then the team would probably have less pressure to keep him.
But if Schröder produces on this team in the way that a player with his skill set and talent should be able to, it is impossible to argue against giving him the money he wants, because at this point we are not talking about boundary space ramifications. We are talking about how much Jeanie Buss would be willing to pay in luxury tax, with no significant impact on the list beyond that, and the only person who should be concerned with that bill is the person who will have to pay it.
Basically, if Schröder looks good, there is no excuse for not staying with him. The good news is that, if you do, we know that this is a group of owners who have always had the pleasure of paying as much as necessary to compete for titles, something that the recent extensions that the Lakers have already signed are just the latest evidence. . Today’s leak appears to be just the two sides saying, “Okay, go away, Dennis, and then we’ll talk in February.” And the fact that this is where the conversations are based is a promising sign.
This developing story can be updated with more information. For more Lakers speak, subscribe to the Silver Screen and Roll podcast feed at iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher or Google Podcasts. You can follow Harrison on Twitter at @hmfaigen.