[Windhorst] 2 days ago, the Lakers and Austin Reaves’ camp were pretty far apart in their discussions about where his contract would land. Then the Lakers yesterday pivoted, increasing their offer somewhere in the neighbourhood of 50% per season.
Yeah we’re about to do something crazy
You guys will LOVE Brandon Ingram.
feels more like a modest Norman Powell signing
This is exactly what it’s going to be
People love BI until he’s actually on your team and ISO’ing for midrange jumpers.
I still love BI and would let him take all the awful middies he wants :(
Facts
Idk, I don’t love BI and he’s (hopefully) not on my team
People love BI?
There was a pretty big chunk of the Pels sub that absolutely insisted he was a first team all-NBA in waiting.
you might be giving tyler hero max money
And they say a hero can save us!
I’m not gonna stand here and wait!!!!
Tbh, if he stays healthy that Pistons team with him is my clear pick to win the east.
Yeah Norman Powell free agency signing
Maxed.
I think you got bailed out by the LaMelo trade. Herro’s price just went way down.
KD
Man this is so tough for you guys. Reaves would’ve been absolutely perfect for you guys.
norman powell or tyler herro?
demar derozan
actually, sabonis + demar for duren trade framework sounds plausible
Why trade for someone you can pick up for free in like 3 weeks?
cause nba execs love to create trades out of nothing
That is not an explanation whatsoever
Feels like you’re making shit up for the sake of making shit up. Just comment whatever you can think of in every thread
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You have issues
I’m just happy you guys probably aren’t going to target Kessler tbh.
Kevin Durant, welcome to Detroit
Reaves for Ausar 🙏 I know he can’t shoot but he’s a menace on defense.
No we’re not lol
Take Kawhi
30m/year was their initial plan for Reaves
now its 45m/year with a player option. wow
I mean multiple teams gave Reaves a max offer. It was either this or let Reaves walk for nothing.
Yeah people yesterday acted like Rob just was trying to be charitable. Detroit was 100% offering that max slot he’s what they need
We can’t let him walk, and he doesn’t affect our cap space this summer so it’s a move you just have to live with
What it does is keep a 4 year, $45 million dollar contract off the Lakers’ books during Luka’s prime.
You’re the Lakers guy so do you but I would rather have Nothing than have Austin Reaves under contract for 4 years 45 million.
and who’s replacing that production? Are we just going to magically replace Reaves in this scenario for pennies?
Just to be clear if we let him leave we only get 20 million more cap space and the FA class this year is bad
Yes, 20 million cap space this year. Now the Lakers are going to be stuck with Austin Reaves, a guy who gets hunted successfully every playoff game.
We already have 50 million cap space this summer after this move, who are you signing to replace Reaves production as our #2 offensive player for 20 million?
Brunson got hunted. Sga got hunted. Luka gets hunted. Thats just how offense is played nowadays.
a whole lot harder to scheme your defense not knowing who’d get hunted. they need all defense forwards and center to compensate for that. not to mention their defense is atrocious. they have to work so hard for every win. i swear no one watches lakers games and those that watch are too homers to realize how badly constructed the team is lol.
there’s a reason almost every lakers loss is a blowout. they can’t dig out of a hole. they are so bad at defense their only hope is for the opponent to shit the bed on offense
their record is fools gold. they are terrible against great and elite teams
How many ppg is cap space averaging next year?
He’s gonna walk and move to fuckin Detroit winters unless he’s got the full max? lol
We didn’t offer him the full max, we essentially matched the max the pistons offered him.
and yes he’s from the Arkansas i doubt a detroit winter is ruining his life
You think he’d turn down millions just cause of the weather lol
Turning down 60m of guaranteed money because of the weather lol
I fucking would
42 million in LA is better than 46 in Detroit
It was 30 in la or 45 in detroit. Per year. So its 60m.
Where do you live and work? You act like Detroit is a shit hole, he’s still going to be in the best parts.
You know they play basketball indoors now, right?
Detroit winters really aren’t bad compared to other Midwest cities, Cleveland Chicago Minnesota and Milwaukee all have it a lot worse.
Hm let’s see. Detroit the 1 seed last year is offering to pay him the max to fill a hole in their team he fits perfectly. And you Mr. Redditor think he’s turning 15 mil per year more because of sunshine?
An extra $10M will buy a very nice winter jacket.
I wonder if they’re doing this just to Sabotage the lakers lol who tf is wanting to pay Austin ‘doesn’t show up in playoffs’ reaves 45mil a year
I think Pistons for sure would’ve
There were rumors of offers, not actual offers afaik
(Detroit didn’t have the money to offer)
Shams said Lakers raised the price once other teams told Reaves they were ready to give him the max.
Agent getting paid 🤑
Agents are worth more than ever with this new CBA. It’s difficult to navigate this market.
Yeah IDK that I’d call a 50% increase just ‘a pivot.’ lol
It’s crazy too cause Austin is like the one guy I’d figure the lakers could convince to take a pretty big discount considering he loves playing with Luka and grew up a Kobe stan and probably wants to be a laker for life
Everyone loyal til 185mil rolls up
He’s 28 and the team got a massive discount on his last contract
He can still be a Kobe fan with $185M somewhere else. He would’ve gotten over not playing with Luka pretty fast
With the Nets and Bulls’ capspace gone, they probably would have gotten away with it. But once Detroit pivoted, they had to make moves
Its fucking pathetic by Lakers management
They should have offered 37-38 and then Increased to 41-42 if he hated that idea
I agree this is roster suicide.
…that won’t really show itself till next year
What? Lmao
the piston were for sure offering the max lmao
Lakers are stupid af to not get at least a little discount regardless. Pelinka really thought Austin wants to move from LA to fuckin Detroit unless the money is equal?
We got a major discount the first extension, and we literally didn’t even offer our max..lakers could’ve given him a 5 year deal
they could have taken the risk but theres enough data that the down side is the lakers are a lottery team without him last season(the luka bron fit is really bad if reaves isnt on the court)
his max was 241 for 5 yrs. 185 for 4 yrs is already at “discount” you dumbass.
You’re telling me that you wouldn’t live in Michigan for \(15 mil a year? Yeah LA has better living & off the court options but it’s \)15 million & he took a big discount the last contract he signed.
They cracked him badly on the last negotiation because as an undrafted player he had no leverage. I doubt he forgot.
detroit sounds awful in media speak but it is an industrial hub with generations of rich automotive engineers. which means they employ the classic rich people zipcode. for arkansas man that’s more than worth it. he’d also be higher priority with detroit than he is with lakers
remember lebron didn’t bad mouth detroit
It’s probably more about the weather and lifestyle compared to LA. Beaches of the Great Lakes aren’t as fun for a millionaire in his 20s as the SoCal beaches are
that trae young contract f’d everyone up
austin was a gtd max to me for pistons so 50% increase sounds nuts. that pillowcase and country song makes sense cause they were gonna lowball him that bad
Yeah hearing that the Lakers were serenading him really pissed me off, but now it makes sense lol
the luka+bron line ups without austin are -6 net rating while the luka+reaves line ups without bron +15 they would have been a bad basketball team
Is that including regular season? Austin reaves is a regular season pub stomper. He’s only shown up once in the playoffs against a super sub par gsw team.
wut? he averaged 21-4-5 on 74 TS% in the WCF against Denver while being the only guy on the Lakers who didn’t get completely torched by Murray.
And he was bad the first 3 games in the playoffs this year because he was shaking the rust off, but even while still diminished he was able to produce offensively the last 3 against OKC (25 and 7 on 68 TS%)
He led the Lakers in crunch time to beat the 2 seed Grizzlies in his first ever playoff series. The last 3 games of the OKC series this year he averaged 25 on 40% from 3 and 50% from the field.
The Austin Reaves playoff conversation is so stupid. He had one bad series in Minnesota due to an ankle injury when he lost his quick first step, and he came back way early this year to try and help the Luka-less team.
Y’all are hating just to hate and you havent watched enough Lakers basketball to form an opinion
What does it matter if lakers are worse if he leaves? They aren’t winning regardless with this roster. Just digging the hole deeper.
Hurts cause true
The NBA is never as simple as “winning” or “not winning.” You think just because the Lakers aren’t 1A contenders with Reaves they want to go back to playing Robert Sacre or something?
What would’ve been your pitch to retain Luka?
“Well, gee, I don’t know if we can definitely win the championship with Austin, so I’ve let a 25-5-5 player leave for nothing. Now you get to ballhandle 100% of the time and can bust your hammy in the fall instead of in the spring”?
Shoutout Pistons lol
Probably because Detroit and them were going for the max contract
But jumping from 30M to 45M is a big jump
So they were offering roughly 4 for 125ish then upped to 4 for 185. Dam
Bill Simmons declared the bad GM summit dead a few years ago bc front offices had stopped doing insane stuff. Then these teams started going buck wild this offseason. I mean a team maxed Trae Young. Wild.
Pelinka has been quietly keeping the position alive between Lightning strikes
He also was dumbfounded that the spurs didn’t give a max available offer to reaves when he was a RFA to make the Lakers match. So the pistons decided to do it this time I guess
A max at that time woulda capped at around $100 mil though.
It has been 10 years since the treacherous summer of 2016
Maybe every year ending in 6 GMs go crazy? What were they up to in 2006?
I wonder if the lakers sent another league wide memo to other teams asking pretty please don’t offer Reaves money again part 2
austin reaves instead of fox and they’d have killed it lol
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Nope. Lakers have Reaves’ bird rights so they can sign him over the cap. Technically they still have the cap space to offer Duren a max.
Probably won’t matter as this doesn’t really affect their available cap space til they actually sign the deal (which will basically happen after all other signings are done). So they can still make the same offers and just go crazy over the cap at the end.
But it will impact on how much they’ll have to pay in taxes and where they are on the apron, and if it comes out that this deal lead to them not pursuing a RFA center I buying the next Pistons fan I see a beer lol
The Duren Kessler bids depend on Lakers relinquishing Rui and Bron’s cap holds.
Doubt it. They would have been better off with a sign and trade for Brown
Literally can still happen. Just 6 months from now.
Brown will be in Memphis soon
Most likely knew detroit is creating cap room
More likely they simply realized he wasn’t bluffing which what he wanted, and they knew other teams would pay him.
Like this isn’t rocket science he was worth X, they tried to pay him Y, he didn’t accept they either had to watch him to elsewhere or pay him.
That and people love to float one weak offer so they can feel like they “negotiated”. Then they pay roughly market anyway.
Source: sell anything on Craigslist.
It’s also just the smart thing to do, with margins this thin when it comes to building a competitive roster, if you can find any form of discount even if it isn’t what you put forward it’s a win.
Is it likely no, but it’s a 0% chance if a team assumes it happen.
Going to be hilarious when he leaves anyway
Just like how Giannis left in free agency? Or any of the last few superstars? No one walks in free agency. Contracts are too big.
Sign and trades exist
Lakers have to agree to the terms..
The Trae contact messed everything lol
Both sides have a point in this argument… can’t lose him for nothing but also, pretty sure he would stay in LA for 4 years/$165 million. Pelinka got agented, and the whole point of having a former agent as your GM is he should know better. If the Pistons were going to offer the max, then just… match their offer
He wasn’t restricted, was he?
Nope, he could’ve walked to any team he wanted to
Exactly. He doesn’t have to accept a contract match. The Lakers have to resign him or they lose him and get nothing back.
No he was never drafted, they didn’t have RFA rights
He’s not a RFA, so there’s a risk he gets insulted by the initial offer and signs with Detroit without waiting for LA to match/exceed.
I was one of those who were like WTF, but it’s not like the Lakers are better if he walks and we got nothing.
Detroit shook LA. I feel like Detroit would’ve 100% been a better fit, but my boy Luka got his guy, despite the ridiculous overpay. I’m not super convinced that reaves may be an injury risk.
I don’t think he’s much of a gym guy or nutrition, but yeah, it was a desperate move by LA…I’m sure they could’ve gotten a better replacement for less.
Windy and his “insider news.” 🤣 Unless their hand is forced by market conditions, every owner would try to avoid paying a max to ANY player if they could.
This hater-coping narrative that Austin Reaves is somehow “unworthy” and that constantly crying about it will magically produce a contract cancellation is silly (or just great clickbait).
AR was good enough to cause a max contract bidding war with 3-4 teams, so he was obviously worthy. If he sucked, no one would have been fighting over him.
we love the pistons
This dude gonna do good during the season, get hurt, then blame injury for poor playoff performance smh
Lot of morons in these comments think the Lakers could some how convince AR to take 40-60 less million dollars lmao
Basically ended Luka’s tenure with the Lakers with one contract offer, another Pelinka masterclass
Bruh Luka wanted AR, lol
I know, but Luka is too emotional when making business decisions, including resigning with the Lakers before actually seeing them build a contending roster around him
This is not emotion. Luka needs AR. He works best with a secondary ball handler and playmaker
The secondary ball handler shouldn’t be getting paid 25% of the cap, unless he also happens to be a lockdown defender, or at least an above average one, like Kyrie was while playing with Luka.
Lmao Mavs fans trying to gaslight the world into thinking Mavs era Kyrie was anything other than a defensive liability is hilarious. Austin was better defensively in the 2025 series against Minnesota than Kyrie’s ever been.
couldn’t let him walk either, they were handcuffed
Doesn’t matter, this money is insane. Unless they somehow build a true contender this off-season and they just go over the cap to resign him with bird rights, they’ll be stuck with one of the worst contracts in the league taking up 25% of their salary cap, all while not being complimentary to their superstar or having a contender level roster.
Also he’s now completely untradeable.
Reaves is a good player and I don’t think the contract is that bad in and of itself. But paying him so much is going to make it exxxtremely difficult to put quality 2-way wings and bigs that they would need around a backcourt of Luka and Reaves to be a win a championship regardless of how good Luka and Reaves are offensively. In that regard, it’s a bad contract.
I agree, as far as his contract is concerned, he’s gonna be an offense -oriented 30 year old SG that can’t really play defense, being paid 25% of the cap, while largely overlapping with his number one’s strengths.
And that’s in a conference where they’ll have to defend SGA, Lamelo-Ant, and Fox-Castle-Harper.
Unless this move was a prelude to a trade, I think the Lakers just became the spiritual successor to the Dame-CJ Blazers. Dame was an all-world offensive player and CJ was the best player of his generation to never make all-star. Paying Dame the supermax was fine, and paying CJ the max wasn’t bad either. But having them on the same team on those contracts made it nearly impossible to get the supporting cast around them to be a serious contender.
I think the Lakers front office now face a similar challenge, and I don’t know if they’re going to do much better than the Blazers front office did.
Unfortunately that’s a great comparison
Ya sort of how I see it. The Lakers were in a rough spot. Luka wants to compete right now and letting Reaves walk does nothing to help them compete next season. Without some serious luck, they wouldn’t be able to replace the production immediately.
Letting him walk is probably the right move in a vacuum. Ideally they could hold out for better opportunities in the next few years. Not really an option though, because they would just be wasting more of Luka’s prime.
I just don’t get why they weren’t able to get a deal done for a little less money than this. I understand 30m/yr wasn’t going to get the job done, but why jump to 45m?
they could let him walk
You know it doesn’t limit the Lakers building a good team now, right? It would have been worse if Reaves left for nothing. Not like the Lakers have any other option out there that could be better than Reaves.
Yup, they have this off-season to build a roster basically from scratch around Luka and Reaves, and then every year after that they won’t be able to do any moves whatsoever because of the apron rules. On top of that Reaves is untradeable now.
So either you believe Pelinka is capable of building a roster to rival OKC and the Spurs for the next 4 seasons in a single off-season, or you don’t believe that and the Lakers are trapped.
Personally I don’t hold Pelinka to that high a regard.
There isn’t anyone they could sign to replace Reaves if he left and they got nothing for him…what do you think they were gonna do