Let’s just get this out of the way: There are going to be a ton of NBA free agent rumors about the Lakers this offseason, and not all of them will come to pass. Some will be legitimate news of interest from the team or player in question, and some will be the typical smokescreens we see from agents and teams every free agency period in attempts to drive a players’ value in one direction or the other.
Here at Silver Screen and Roll, we’re going to attempt to track and contextualize every reputable free agency rumor we see over the offseason. This team may have just won a championship, but that only means that the offseason — and retaining the right players while adding smart new additions — has just become more important than ever while the Lakers try to bolster their chances of repeating.
Los Angeles has five players who are automatically free agents (Jared Dudley, Dwight Howard, Markieff Morris, Dion Waiters, and J.R. Smith) and five others who can join them in the market (Anthony Davis, Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, Rajon Rondo, Avery Bradley and JaVale McGee, who all have player options and have expressed varying degrees of interest in declining or accepting them).
That’s 10 players on a 15-player roster, which leaves room for both retaining and tinkering by Rob Pelinka and the front office moving forward.
On this page, we are going to track all the latest trustworthy news and updates on both the Lakers’ free agents, and which players they’re linked to. Bookmark it and come back, because we’ll be refreshing the list of stories below this and attempting to cut through the noise and see what’s legit all offseason long.
Free agency officially begins on Nov. 20. For a list of free agents connected to the Lakers sorted by name instead of chronologically, check out this page.
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