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UPDATE: Anthony Davis and his agent, Rich Paul of Klutch Sports, will meet with the Lakers on Tuesday, Nov. 30, according to a report from Brad Turner of the Los Angeles Times.
Original story follows.
Free agency started 10 days ago and Anthony Davis still hasn’t signed a new contract with the Los Angeles Lakers. Does that mean it’s time to panic? Not exactly.
Although Davis hasn’t committed to re-signing with the Lakers yet, the overwhelming expectation is that he will soon, and that was true even before he won his first-ever championship in Los Angeles. How soon? This week, according to Marc Stein of the New York Times:
Anthony Davis, who remains unsigned but is widely expected to soon finalize a max deal with the Lakers at the contract length of his choosing, is expected to meet with team officials as early as Tuesday, league sources say
— Marc Stein (@TheSteinLine) December 1, 2020
Tuesday, Dec. 1, is the day that individual player workouts begin. Five days later, teams will be permitted to hold group workouts. Somewhere between Dec. 1 and Dec. 6, teams are expected to hold their virtual media days. In other words, Davis used every one of his vacation days.
Now, Davis and the Lakers will sit down and iron out the details of Davis’ contract. It’s long been assumed that Davis will sign a three-year contract with a player option in the final year so that he can enter free agency in 2023, when he’ll be eligible for a max contract worth 35% of the cap. However, Davis could opt to sign a more long-term deal because of everything that has happened in the past year.
Regardless of how many years Davis decides to re-sign for, the Lakers will only have enough room under the hard cap to sign one more player to a veteran’s minimum contract once he re-signs. That means what the Lakers have right now is more or less what they’ll have for the majority of the regular season.
Assuming Davis’ contract will be the bow on the Lakers’ offseason, it will be hard to argue that they didn’t have the best offseason of any team in the NBA. They acquired the Sixth Man of the Year in Montrezl Harrell, the runner up for Sixth Man of the Year in Dennis Schröder, two starting-caliber veterans in Wesley Matthews and Marc Gasol, and they’re on the verge of retaining arguably the most dominant big man in the NBA.
I’m not saying they’re going to repeat, but they’ve certainly put themselves in a position to.
For more Lakers talk, subscribe to the Silver Screen and Roll podcast feed on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher or Google Podcasts. You can follow this author on Twitter at @RadRivas.