Lakers Have Eyes on Gary Trent Jr., Spencer Dinwiddie, per Report

Los Angeles would need to clear space to use its taxpayer midlevel exception to sign either of the two players.

Josh Wilson | Jul 7, 2024

Spencer Dinwiddie played with the Lakers for part of the 2023-24 season. / Gary A. Vasquez-USA TODAY Sports

LeBron James will return to the Los Angeles Lakers on a new contract, which is the big move for Los Angeles's offseason. Now, Los Angeles needs to fill out the fringes of its roster.

According to Jovan Buha, James took a $3 million discount to keep the Lakers under the second apron, which also puts them in position to use the midlevel exception, valued at $5.2 million for 2024–25. They will need to make minor moves to free it up for use.

Buha says that Gary Trent Jr. and Spencer Dinwiddie are both names to watch according to his league sources if the Lakers can, in fact, free up their midlevel exception.

Dinwiddie spent the last part of his 2023–24 season with the Lakers, signing as a free agent after he was traded to the Toronto Raptors and subsequently waived. Trent has spent the last several years with the Raptors. Both are wings with shooting ability.

Staying under the second apron is meaningful for the Lakers. It came into play for the first time this season under the new collective bargaining agreement, and it limits teams to how much salary they can take back in trades while also restricting them to only being able to make one-for-one trades in terms of the number of incoming and outgoing players. It is a very limiting mechanism meant to improve parity in the league.

Published Jul 7, 2024|Modified Jul 7, 2024

JOSH WILSON

Josh Wilson is the news director of the Breaking and Trending News team at Sports Illustrated. Before joining SI in 2024, he worked for FanSided in a variety of roles, most recently as senior managing editor of the brand’s flagship site. He has also served as a general manager of Sportscasting, the sports arm of a start-up sports media company, where he oversaw the site’s editorial and business strategy. Wilson has a bachelor’s degree in mass communications from SUNY Cortland and a master’s in accountancy from the Gies College of Business at the University of Illinois. He loves a good nonfiction book and enjoys learning and practicing Polish. Wilson lives in Chicago but was raised in upstate New York. He spent most of his life in the Northeast and briefly lived in Poland, where he ate an unhealthy amount of pastries for six months.