Los Angeles Lakers must exhaust every option to fill out the roster

The Los Angeles Lakers have Anthony Davis and Lebron James for at least the next year. But they still have tremendous work to do to fill out the rest of the roster.

Most of the talk surrounding the Los Angeles Lakers over the past couple of days has been how they plan on filling out the rest of their roster.

Currently, they have three players under contract for next season.

Anthony Davis, LeBron James and Kyle Kuzma. Keep in mind that the Lakers are also still paying Luol Deng‘s stretch salary. The Lakers successfully cleared about $32 million for a max salary player.

Honestly, if the Lakers weren’t still having to shell out around $5 million for Luol Deng’s dead contract, the Lakers would have a max salary slot regardless of Anthony Davis refusing to waive his $4 million trade kicker.

Nevertheless, LeBron and company have filled up a huge chunk of the salary cap which stands at $109 Million for the 2019-2020 NBA season with the tax level set at around $132 Million.

Ideally, the Lakers would like to fit a potential max player under the cap and then focus on filling out the rest of the roster.

After trading Wagner, Bonga and Jones to the Washington Wizards, the team has about 10 roster spots to fill.

Now the Lakers will have a little bit of wiggle room between the salary cap and the luxury tax but even then, the Lakers are going to have to exhaust every single option to fill out the remaining roster spots.

The Lakers will most definitely look to use provisions such as the mid-level exception and veteran minimum contracts to shape out the last few players on their roster. I don’t know exactly how deep Jeanie Buss’s pockets are, but I would be astonished if she was not willing to put her foot into the luxury tax in order to get the players that the Lakers need.

In terms of players, on June 19, 2019, Shams Charania of The Athletic reported that the Memphis Grizzlies agreed to trade Mike Conley Jr to the Utah Jazz for Grayson Allen, Jae Crowder and Kyle Korver along with multiple draft picks.

The reason I bring this up is that a player like Kyle Korver could get bought out by the Grizzlies, who I doubt will want to pay him $7 million dollars.

He could be an intriguing option for the Lakers as he is still a great shooter and has played with LeBron.

But other than him there is an abundance of players that the Lakers could go after.

They will almost assuredly need to find a starting backcourt, so guys like Jeremy Lamb and Ricky Rubio could be available. Then there is the matter of filling out the bench, presumably with guys like Marcus Morris and Terrence Ross who could be viable options.

The point is, despite Rob Pelinka acquiring one of the best big men of all time, for him the real test starts now. If he can take the tools that are available to him and maneuver them into a competent roster around LeBron and AD and still possibly bring in another superstar player, then even I will have to give the man his props.

For Rob Pelinka, his time to shine will be this weekend. We will see if he will rise to the occasion or falter under the pressure.