When June 30 rolls around, the Lakers will kick off a free agency where — for the second year running — the team will be looking to fill lots of holes with few avenues to do so. The team will only have three players guaranteed to be under contract, two more that have player options, and three more with team options. The rest will be unrestricted free agents.
Those players, with their upcoming salaries for 2022-23, are as follows:
- Russell Westbrook ($47,063,478, player option)
- LeBron James ($44,474,988, guaranteed)
- Anthony Davis ($37,980,720, guaranteed)
- Talen Horton-Tucker ($10,260,000, guaranteed)
- Kendrick Nunn ($5,250,000, player option)
- Stanley Johnson ($2,351,521, team option)
- Austin Reaves ($1,563,518, team option)
- Wenyen Gabriel ($1,878,720, team option)
There may be a lot of decisions made, but one of them was effectively already decided with Kendrick Nunn telling media that he would be picking up his option during his exit interview after missing the entirety of the 2021-22 season.
Outside of that, there’s a lot of uncertainty around the Lakers roster when it comes to the future. The nature of signing a host of veteran’s minimum one-year deals like the team did last summer means the need to do it all over again this upcoming offseason.
Much of the offseason, though, will be shaped around both the team’s hiring of a coach and how the Westbrook situation plays itself out. Regardless of the results of those, though, the Lakers will figure to be busy again during the opening days of the offseason.
In this automatically updating feed below, you can track the podcasts and articles looking at what Lakers players from last year’s disappointing roster brought to the team, a closer look at their contract situations moving forward and whether we think they should and/or will be back next season.
So bookmark this page and check back daily, Monday through Friday, in the weeks leading up to free agency for new analysis in written and audio form every single day.
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