2. The Los Angeles Lakers can afford to just outright release him
The reason why the Los Angeles Lakers want to trade Kent Bazemore is so they don’t have to pay his salary on the books and the tax implications that come with it. By trading him for a non-guaranteed contract, they would essentially zero out the rest of his contract and replace it with someone new.
While it makes sense to save money when you can, it is not like the Los Angeles Lakers can’t afford to do this. It is not like Bazemore has a massive contract and whoever the Lakers are going to sign is going to have a massive contract.
Bazemore is on a minimum deal and the new contract would be on a minimum deal. Sure, it would cost them another $5 million so in just luxury tax payments but why should the fans care? This is a billion-dollar sports franchise. The second-most valuable in the NBA. And they cannot afford a small extra tax hit?
Not re-signing Alex Caruso, while I disagreed with it, could at least be talked about because the tax hit would have been so much higher because of his salary. They still could have afforded it but it’s easier to explain and not sound like a penny pincher.
This is just ridiculous. Do the Lakers really want to trade a future asset when they do not have many future assets just to save some money? I’m all for trading picks to improve the team but the Lakers are only going to marginally improve the team by letting Bazemore go and signing someone else. Plus, they can make that improvement without trading the asset!
This is not a small-market team. This is not a team that was blindsided by a lower salary cap and is over budget. This is a team that willingly and knowingly traded for one of the most expensive contracts in the league when they already had two max guys on the books.
This is not something where they are even trading picks to get off of a massive contract, like Westbrook. This would be the team trading a future asset to save a marginal amount. Again, this is a billion-dollar sports franchise we are talking about.