Los Angeles Lakers: Tier 1 free agents to target
By Ethan Temkin
If the Los Angeles Lakers are going to make a splash this offseason, it will come from this tier one list of free agents.
After months of speculation, the Los Angeles Lakers have finally landed their white whale in Anthony Davis, living up to the promise made by Magic Johnson and Rob Pelinka two seasons ago when they vowed that the Lakers were going to acquire multiple max-level talents.
However, the Lakers are by no means done yet. Due to the complicated nature of the CBA and salary cap rules, there are a number of hurdles the Lakers need to clear if they want to retain enough cap space to sign a max player.
There are several conflicting reports as to what date the Lakers and Pelicans plan to execute this trade, with some reporting that the trade will happen as soon as the moratorium on transactions ends on July 6th, which would limit the Lakers cap-space to somewhere between $23.7 million and $27.1 million depending on whether or not Anthony Davis agrees to waive his $4 million trade kicker.
Regardless, the Lakers were desperately trying to get to $32.7 million in cap space, which is the contract that most of the players in the Tier 1 category will command given their years of experience.
The team was pulling out all the stops to get there and finally accomplished that feat last week. The Lakers completed a trade with the Washington Wizards to get their max salary slot.
What constitutes a Tier 1 player? Tier 1 players are the cream of the crop of this free agent class, who possess the perfect combination of age, skill, experience, and pedigree to be one of the best players on a championship-level team.
The list has shrunk these past few weeks due to unforeseen injuries to Kevin Durant and Klay Thompson, but there are still a number of elite prospects on the board that the Lakers should heavily consider.