Los Angeles Lakers: How LA can get Mike Conley this offseason
By Jason Reed
How the Los Angeles Lakers can trade for Mike Conley:
The main backbone of this trade is Mike Conley effectively using his leverage as a free agent to convince the Utah Jazz to sign-and-trade him instead of simply losing the asset as well as Dennis Schroder agreeing to be in a sign-and-trade deal himself. The trade would look something like the following:
This is the classic situation where Conley would leverage his way into a place where he would potentially want to play when he otherwise could not sign there. Of course, this takes Conley wanting to play in LA, but based on his comments, it is a fair assumption that he would be intrigued by this idea.
The Lakers do not have the salary-cap space to sign Conley as a free agent this offseason. However, the team does have Bird Rights on Dennis Schroder and can utilize those Bird Rights to sign him to a contract with the intent of trading him.
Schroder would have to be okay with this as well but with his market not looking all that great, something tells me that he would be more than willing to sign on to this to get paid and go to another contender.
Assuming Schroder gets around $22 million per season, plus Kuzma’s $13 million, the Lakers would have to sign Conley to a deal worth around $35 million per season. That is a big number but a three-year, $105 million contract with a club option is not the worst thing in the world.
That might not seem great for Conley because of the club option, but that is more money than he is going to get in the open market.
There lies the Xs and Os of the trade. Let’s break down why both teams could say yes, starting with Utah.