2. Alex Caruso
In reality, Alex Caruso is the true no. 1 player on this list in my heart but I wanted to shake it up and shock some of the return readers here at Lake Show Life. Everyone who reads my work here (thank you!) is probably sick of me bringing up Alex Caruso.
If you are one of those people that have read this Caruso spiel multiple times, you can click over to the next page.
There is no reason why the Los Angeles Lakers do not have Alex Caruso on the team this season. The team had his Bird Rights and he ended up signing for a reasonable price. Yes, he would have had a big tax implication with the team so far over the luxury tax but this is a multi-billion dollar franchise that can afford it.
It becomes even more frustrating when you learn the amount that the Lakers low-balled Caruso for. The team outright let its best defensive guard from the previous two seasons walk away for an extremely cheap price.
Caruso was behind just Matisse Thybulle in Defensive Box Plus/Minus over his last two years on the Lakers. He and LeBron were the best two-man lineup in the entire NBA in 2019-20 in terms of net rating.
Yeah, the Lakers could have used that on this year’s team.