Los Angeles Lakers: Realistic tier 3 free agents to target

1. Brook Lopez

The Lakers need to pull a John Cusack in Say Anything and stand outside of Brook Lopez’ apartment blasting “Baby Come Back” on their stereo. After the strange turn of events that had the Lakers not even offer a contract to Brook this past season, BroLo signed with the Milwaukee Bucks and was able to help unleash Giannis Antetokounmpo with his spacing and low-post defense, catapulting the Bucks to the best record in the league.

However, the Lakers can still make things right as Lopez is once again a free agent this summer. It’ll be hard to lure him away from an incredibly successful Bucks team, but the one thing in the Laker’s favor is the fact that the Bucks have other free agents to think about in Nikola Mirotic, Malcolm Brogdon, and Khris Middleton (Middleton technically has a player-option for next season, but will almost certainly decline it to sign a long-term deal).

They also recently signed guard Eric Bledsoe to a 4-year extension at an annual rate of around $17M per year, which practically evaporated all of their cap space.

We’ve seen how valuable floor spacing is, especially at the center position and Lopez was one of the very best this season at that job, averaging 36.5% from 3-point territory on just over six attempts. On top of his shooting, Lopez is also a solid rim protector, allowing a 52.6 DFG%, which is good for fourth in the entire league.

He’s not as mobile as he used to be, but the Lakers have a multitude of wing defenders such as Lonzo Ball, Brandon Ingram, Josh Hart and even LeBron James at times, who can provide help defense for the lumbering Lopez.