Lakers News: Insider Skeptical Of LA's Interest In Trading For Star This Summer

And maybe that's for the best.

Your Los Angeles Lakers have a few routes to signing big-ticket new players this season. While the Lakers technically could clear out around $24 million in space under the salary cap heading into the 2023 offseason, though doing so would require LA to renounce its qualifying offers for restricted free agents Austin Reaves and Rui Hachimura, which the team would almost certainly not do. 

Instead, what seems more likely is that Los Angeles will re-sign a lot of its impending free agents, restricted and otherwise, and in doing so could potentially look to package together some of these new contracts in sign-and-trade deals for high quality upgrades, specifically with free agent point guards Fred VanVleet and Kyrie Irving.

However, to hear Adrian Wojnarowski of ESPN tell, the Lakers will be looking to improve along the margins of their roster rather than prioritizing big overhauls.

Due to the purportedly hyper-restrictive second tax apron in the league's impending new CBA, Woj explained on the Worldwide Leader's morning show "Get Up" that he believes “there's no big game hunting out there for this [Lakers'] organization."

“In this league right now, with a new collective bargaining agreement, you can't really pay three max contracts, three max superstars and expect to have any depth on your roster," Wojnarowski explained. "It's going to look a lot the same.”

Keep in mind, LA had the third-best record in the league (18-8) after team president Rob Pelinka made a flurry of trades in time for the February 9th deadline. If that win percentage was theoretically extended over the course of a full season, Los Angeles would have won 57 games. Despite being underdogs in each play-in round, the Lakers made it all the way to the Western Conference Finals, where they were swept by the eventual championship-winning Denver Nuggets.

The team's reconfigured roster helped create more floor space and defensive help around stars LeBron James and Anthony Davis, and created more opportunities for incumbent players like Austin Reaves and Dennis Schröder to shine in new roles. Reaves eventually became the club's starting shooting guard, and instantly emerged as the club's third-best player behind you-know-who. Schröder, who had been perhaps an under-qualified starter, became an overqualified reserve.

All this is to say, maybe LA doesn't need to "win" the offseason with a splashy move for an All-Star. Maybe the team just needs to take care of its current role player free agents and make smaller improvements elsewhere.

Or maybe Denver is about to kick off a dynastic run.

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