FanPost

What Does the Deng Stretch Mean for the Lakers?

It's finally happened. The day we knew was going to come ever since that fateful summer of 2016. After two failed seasons of trying to get rid of forward Luol Deng's exorbitant contract of 4 years/$72 million, the Lakers have decided to stretch Deng's remaining money starting next season, turning a his one year, $18M left on his contract, into three years, $6M starting in the 2019-2020. This functionally closes the chapter on the Luol Deng saga for the Los Angeles Lakers and finally closes the book on the infamous MozDeng deals of the 2016 offseason. Let's take a closer look into what the Deng stretch means for the Lakers, and the flexibility they're going to have going into next season and beyond.

The Cap Situation

Because the Lakers waived Deng so late into the offseason, the stretch provision on his contract doesn't actually go into effect until next season, meaning that his entire $18M for his third year, will end up as dead money on the Laker's books. The Lakers are slightly above the cap, which is fine, as their cap situation as currently constructed allows them to retain a lot of flexibility for the 2019 offseason and go after one of the marquee free agents in Kawhi Leonard, or Klay Thompson.

For the 2019-2020 season, the Lakers project to have $68,497,647 in contracts. This is including Deng's now stretched cap hit of $6.27M/yr for the next three years. This is also assuming they renounce the cap holds of Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, Rajon Rondo, Lance Stephenson, Michael Beasley, and Javale McGee, which they almost certainly will.

Previewing the 2019-2020 Offseason

These moves allow the Lakers to walk into 2019 Free Agency with about $40M in cap space, a talented young core, and oh yeah, that guy LeBron James, I hear he's pretty good. As of right now the 2019 FA class appears very top heavy, and uncertain. Kawhi Leonard has a player option for the 2019-2020 season that he can choose to decline to enter free agency, and Klay Thompson is an unrestricted free agent, but is currently in one of the best situations for him and it's hard to see him leaving a perennial title contender in the Warriors.

After that, there isn't anyone who really moves the needle for the Lakers, with the next best available free agents being DeAndre Jordan, Tobias Harris, Nikola Vucevic, Tyreke Evans, and Kentavious Caldwell-Pope. I always use the Lakers as an example of the idea that just because you have the money, doesn't mean you're guaranteed the talent. The Lakers have been rebuffed time and time again by free agents in the past so there's no guarantee that they'll land either Kawhi or Klay. Kawhi can easily take a shine to Toronto and decide to stay, much like how Paul George was wooed by Oklahoma City last year and I can easily see Klay taking a pay-cut to keep this dominant Warriors roster together. After that, do the Lakers really want to tie up max money in guys like Jordan, or Harris?

The Ticking Cap Bomb

What do the Lakers and Celtics have in common? They're both going to be in cap hell in the next couple of years. Both teams are fielding a roster full of young, talented players on cost-controlled rookie contracts, that are set to expire starting with Brandon Ingram, and Jaylen Brown in the summer of 2020. The next season, Lonzo, Tatum, Kuzma and Hart's deals also all come off the books. If both teams want to keep their young talent, they're both going to have to dive deep into the luxury tax to do so.

The cap situation for the Lakers is very much a use it or lose it situation. As this $40M in space they have will really only last until the 2020 trade deadline, as that will be the last time they can functionally use that space. That means there's pressure to land a max free agent sooner rather than later, and use Bird Rights, which allows teams to go over the cap to re-sign their own players, for their young core.

The LeBron Factor

LeBron James will be 34 years old, going into his 16th NBA season. The idea of "kicking the can" down the line a year is absolutely ludicrous when we're talking about the best player in basketball. So it behooves the Lakers to make win-now moves, because when LeBron is on your roster, that is exactly what mode your team is in. Now whether or not that's the right move is another conversation, but Laker fans might not want to get too attached to guys like Kuzma or Hart. However, it's more likely that Magic and Pelinka would rather part with expendable guys like Rondo, Stephenson or Beasley than young, cost-controlled talent in Kuzma and Hart.

The new front office team led by Magic Johnson and Rob Pelinka have done everything in their power to salvage the wreckage left behind by Jim Buss and Mitch Kupchak. Two years into their tenure and you can safely say they've done a good amount to right the ship. They drafted smart, landed the best player in the world in LeBron James, and managed to get off three bad contracts in Clarkson, Mozgov, and Deng at minimal cost. It remains to be seen whether or not they can actually use the cap space they've created with these moves, but they still put themselves in this position in the first place and that has to count for something.