Los Angeles Lakers: Spurs named realistic destination for Kentavious Caldwell-Pope
By Nick Ziegler
After one season with the Los Angeles Lakers, Kentavious Caldwell-Pope will be a free agent once again. Where would be a realistic destination for him?
One of the most surprising moves of the offseason for the Los Angeles Lakers was their ability to sign Kentavious Caldwell-Pope. Coming into the offseason, the Lakers didn’t figure to have a chance to sign Caldwell-Pope as a restricted free agent. However, the Pistons ended up trading for Avery Bradley and renounced their rights to Caldwell-Pope.
Since this happened somewhat late in the free agency process, Caldwell-Pope’s options were somewhat limited. Since the Lakers didn’t want to hand out any multi-year deals this offseason, they were able to get creative with KCP’s contract and just gave him a one-year deal for about $18 million dollars.
With the Lakers, Caldwell-Pope was able to have a solid season, as he averaged 13.2 points, 5.2 rebounds, and 1.4 steals in 33.2 minutes per game. Even though there were some frustrating times for KCP, he was able to shoot well from beyond the arc and play solid defense like the Lakers expected him too.
Recently, Bleacher Report named the San Antonio Spurs as a realistic landing spot for KCP this offseason.
Despite making the playoffs, it was a somewhat disappointing season for the Spurs. With Kawhi Leonard out for most of the season, that limited what they were going to be able to accomplish in the playoffs.
While we will have to wait and see what happens with Leonard’s situation in San Antonio, a player like Caldwell-Pope could be a good replacement or teammate. The thought of having both KCP and Leonard on the wing would be very difficult for opposing teams to deal when on offense.
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Since the Lakers have plans of landing players like LeBron James and Paul George, they will likely be waiting on answers from them before visiting the possibility of bringing Caldwell-Pope back. However, if the Lakers miss on stars, they could very well be open to the idea of bringing KCP back on another one-year deal to keep their cap flexibility.