Lakers must avoid making this disastrous mistake this summer

Things are looking up for the Los Angeles Lakers right now. The team has thrived since reinventing the roster at the trade deadline and is in a position to climb up the Western Conference standings and potentially make some noise in the NBA Playoffs.

Better yet, the moves made at the deadline help set the Lakers up for the future as well. The team got younger and got contracts that are controllable after the season. This is far better than the team having Russell Westbrook’s contract just expire and essentially losing the cap space for nothing.

While everything Rob Pelinka did at the deadline as gold and he deserves praise for it, there are still some concerns about what the team could do this summer. Ownership definitely has a say in what this team does basketball-wise and if the Lakers don’t make a run with this roster there could be a pivot that ends up in an absolute disaster for the franchise.

Our friends at the Lakers Legacy Podcast share the same worry, as evident from their tweet about the possibility of making this disastrous mistake:

Lakers must not trade for Kyrie Irving regardless of the circumstances.

Let’s break down this entire situation, shall we?

First of all, the luxury tax. It has been no secret that the Lakers have pinched pennies in the past (somebody call Alex Caruso) and hard-capping themselves would be a way to avoid going into the tax. There was speculation that Jeanie Buss was determined to reset the repeater’s tax for going over the luxury tax and the team would do that by hard-capping itself.

If the Lakers were to execute a sign-and-trade of D’Angelo Russell then they would be hard-capped at that luxury tax number, meaning they cannot go over regardless of the situation. That would be a smart PR move by ownership if this is the main goal. Go get a big star so everyone is focused on that while not realizing there are monetary reasons to do this.

Why is this so bad? The salaries of LeBron James, Anthony Davis and Kyrie Irving would put the Lakers in a position where they literally would have to build out the rest of the roster with minimum contracts. They would have to reject Malik Beasley’s club option, let Mo Bamba walk on his non-guaranteed deal and not re-sign Austin Reaves.

The roster next year would essentially consist of LeBron James, AD, Kyrie, Jarred Vanderbilt, Max Christie, two rookies from the 2023 NBA Draft, Cole Swider, Scotty Pippen Jr, Davon Reed, and whatever minimum contracts the team can get its hand on.

But they have Kyrie Irving!

Are we sure that is even a good thing? We literally saw this same song and dance transpire: Los Angeles traded three quality role players for a regressing point guard with an inflated salary. How did that work out?

Irving is not going to get better into his 30s. He is not going to get healthier. It would be a penny-pinching move disguised as a star move for PR that would be bad in so many ways. That roster is not good enough to win a championship and then the Lakers will be saddled with Irving at a max deal for another three years.

Star power is fun. I get that. But the Lakers are much better off re-signing Russell and running it back with this roster and then going from there. Who knows, in a year’s time there might be a chance to flip Russell for someone even better for Irving.

This kind of move would certainly get headlines but in reality, it would be a disaster. Los Angeles needs to let another team make the Kyrie Irving mistake.