Podcast: How much should the Lakers offer in a Kawhi Leonard trade after signing LeBron James?

Thus far, the Los Angeles Lakers could not have played their hand any better as it pertains to their efforts to acquire Kawhi Leonard from the San Antonio Spurs, who probably hate them about as much as any organization across the NBA. Their work is nowhere near done, however, and some tough questions still have to be answered regarding what they might be willing to give up if a deal is to be consummated at all.

Apparently, they haven’t arrived here without a little help from, um, let’s just say outside influences. The process of trying to figure out exactly how much leverage they do hold over the Spurs would be quite a bit more complicated if they hadn’t known the entire time what they could or could not expect from LeBron James.

Now that they do concretely have that information, they hold all the cards in any negotiation with San Antonio. No matter how stubborn Gregg Popovich or RC Buford might be, that doesn’t change the fact that Leonard wants to be a Laker, will apparently do whatever it takes to make that happen and has an excuse (injury) to sit out as long as it might take to force his way here.

Magic Johnson and Rob Pelinka have shown themselves to be quite the negotiators with other teams, and that’s going to come in handy given who is sitting across the table from them in these talks.

Harrison and I take you through how we got here, then detail the direction each of us think this should go. Once again, this is going to shock you, but we don’t quite see eye-to-eye on this.

Listen to the full conversation below and as always, please check out old episodes or guarantee you won’t miss any ever again by subscribing on iTunes.