Lakers News: Ranking LA's Top 10 Incumbent Free Agent Priorities This Offseason

LA has a boatload of decisions to make this summer.

Your Los Angeles Lakers have a bevy of big decisions to make with regards to their own free agents this summer. Only LeBron James, Anthony Davis, Jarred Vanderbilt and Max Christie are under team control next season. LA has team options on Mo Bamba, Wenyen Gabriel and Shaquille Harrison, as well. Everyone else is either a restricted or unrestricted free agent. 

For the purposes of this exercise, we can assume the Lakers let Gabriel and Bamba hit the open market, although Los Angeles could easily pick up the options and package them (perhaps along with their No. 17 pick in this year's draft) for a veteran upgrade.

Also, a caveat about this list: I'm going to be ranking these players more by positional fit on this projected LA roster than by overall talent.

10. Mo Bamba ($10.3 million team option)

The ostensible 3-and-D big man didn't provide much of either during his finite time with the Lakers. A sore left ankle limited his availability, but even when healthy Darvin Ham often passed Bamba over in favor of the smaller Wenyen Gabriel, who has a high motor on both ends but a much lower ceiling.

9. Wenyen Gabriel (unrestricted free agent)

Gabriel, all 6'9" of him, has always been miscast on the Lakers. He's really more of a four than a five, but spent 71% of his possessions at center and just 29% at power forward during the 2022-23 season, his first under Darvin Ham, per Cleaning The Glass.

8. Tristan Thompson (unrestricted free agent)

Why am I putting Thompson ahead of Gabriel, you ask? Because, in the most important elimination game of the Lakers' season, Ham went to Thompson, not Gabriel or Bamba, for spot backup center minutes. 

During his 9:41 of meaningful time in Game 4 of LA's Western Conference Finals against the Denver Nuggets, Thompson played solid, disruptive defense against Denver All-Star Nikola Jokic and made minor-but-helpful contributions on the other end, finishing with a modest four points on 2-of-4 shooting from the field and pulling down one board.

7. Malik Beasley ($16.5 million team option)

Upon being traded to LA from the Utah Jazz as part of the Russell Westbrook deal, the 6'4" swingman immediately overtook the Lakers' starting shooting guard gig. When Austin Reaves got too good to be denied, Beasley was moved to a bench role, where he struggled to stay in rhythm. A high-volume three-point shooter, the Florida State product averaged 11.1 points on an inefficient .392/.353/.619 slash line, 3.3 rebounds, 1.2 dimes and 0.8 steals a night during his 26 contests with LA. That three-point rate, though not spectacularly efficient, arrived on a whopping 7.2 triple attempts per game. 

He completely fell off during the playoffs. In LA's first round series against the Memphis Grizzlies, Beasley averaged 4.2 points on a brutal 29.2% shooting from the floor, 1.0 boards and 0.3 assists. Without his shooting, he's a bit useless, and he was relegated to riding pine for all but blowout minutes during the rest of the playoffs.

6. Troy Brown Jr. (unrestricted free agent)

After a year to forget with the Chicago Bulls in 2021-22, LA took a flyer on the athletic 6'6" swingman out of the University of Oregon, still just 23. Brown appeared in 76 games for Los Angeles during the regular season, starting 45. He averaged a relatively modest 7.1 points on a pretty good slash line of .430/.381/.872, along with 4.1 rebounds, 1.3 assists, and 0.8 steals a night. Though he stuck in LA's regular season rotation primarily thanks to his defensive versatility (he could credibly cover shooting guards through power forwards), Brown eventually fell out of the Lakers' playoff rotation after failing to replicate his jump shooting prowess in the postseason. He's still worthy of consideration for LA on a veteran's minimum, especially as a two-way option to spell LeBron James during his year-21 season.

5. D'Angelo Russell (unrestricted free agent)

D-Lo's free agency this summer represents an especially interesting and polarizing case. 

On the one hand, thanks to his stellar regular season career shooting and passing numbers, he's likely to command more money than the two guards that I rank ahead of him, given that as a whole he possesses a more valuable skillset. 

On the other hand, he has never been a consistently good playoff performer, as we saw firsthand during LA's run to the Western Conference Finals. Dennis Schröder and Austin Reaves totally supplanted him as the team's two far more valuable guard options, as Russell's shooting abandoned him when the lights were brightest. 

The reality is, due to Los Angeles most likely retaining the top two players on this list, LA will most likely need to at least initially re-sign Russell to a decent eight-figure offer. Hopefully something in the range of $15 million annually can be agreed upon, and hopefully Rob Pelinka can find a sign-and-trade partner with which Russell would then be amenable to joining.

4. Lonnie Walker IV (unrestricted free agent)

LA holds Walker's Non-Bird Rights, meaning the team can pay him a 20% bump on his 2022-23 salary, which would be worth $7.8 million, even if it's over the cap. Walker proved to be a really valuable bench playoff piece during the Lakers' second round series against the then-reigning-champion Golden State Warriors, pouring in tough jumpers and drives without fear, even after he had been booted from the team's rotation entirely during the team's first round series against the Memphis Grizzlies. He's not a particularly great defender, but at least he's athletic and eager on that end of the floor. Other clubs may compete for his services, but it's hard to see them going too far over that $7.8 million number. 

To be clear, I think he has more valuable to LA in his role than Russell does in his, though Russell is obviously the better player of the two. These rankings reflect a combination of the player's ability and their worth to the team, they're not just pure player rankings. 

3. Dennis Schröder (unrestricted free agent)

Continuing on from the Lonnie Walker thread, Schröder is not a "better" player than D'Angelo Russell in a vacuum. He's not nearly the same threat as an outside shooter, nor is he really the kind of top-level playmaker that teams would want out of their lead guard. That and chemistry concerns could hamper his market somewhat. But he's also not actually a lead guard anymore. It's pretty clear that he thrives best as the third guard in a quality rotation, thanks to his solid passing (again, not as the lead ball handler, but more as a supplemental distributor who can read opposing defenses pretty well) and very good on-ball defense. Though his shooting is spotty, he can also occasional step up to nail some clutch postseason buckets. 

His most memorable for LA came in the form a corner three off a LeBron James dish that seemed likely to cement a play-in game victory over the Minnesota Timberwolves in regulation, before an ill-considered Anthony Davis foul on Mike Conley, behind the three-point arc, sent the Wolves' starting point guard to the free-throw line, where he promptly nailed all three charity stripe looks and extended the contest into overtime. Los Angeles won in the bonus five minutes, of course, but it turned that Schröder triple into more of a footnote than the lead story it deserved to be.

After an underwhelming 2021-22 season spent split between the Boston Celtics and Houston Rockets, Schröder inked a $2.7 million veteran's minimum deal to return to Los Angeles for 2022-23. With his Non-Bird Rights, LA can re-sign him for a contract worth $3.2 million annually while operating over the cap. Of course, there are other mechanisms the team could use to keep the 29-year-old rostered this summer. Los Angeles currently boasts the Non-Taxpayer's Midlevel Exception, projected to be worth $12.4 million, and a $4.5 million Bi-Annual Exception. If the Lakers don't re-sign him until they get over the cap, they would have to pay him a lesser $5 million Taxpayer's Midlevel Exception.

2. Rui Hachimura (restricted free agent)

Hachimura flashed tantalizing upside in the playoffs after a pretty up-and-down regular season run in LA. 

How real was that stint? How much can Los Angeles reasonably expect to see the playoff edition of Hachimura in the future?

Those are the two key questions confronting the Lakers' front office brain trust this summer. 

The 6'9" power forward, a restricted free agent, is certainly worth retaining if his price doesn't get too astronomic, but if, say, he can be moved for the more reliable Kyle Kuzma in a double-sign-and-trade deal with the Wizards (though why he'd agree to return to Washington is anyone's guess), an avenue along those lines might be worth pursuing.

1. Austin Reaves (restricted free agent)

Unfortunately for the Lakers, the secret on Reaves is out after his terrific playoff run. There's almost no way some rival franchise doesn't offer the 6'5" swingman out of Wichita as much money as it possibly can. That would be a four-year, $98 million deal which, though probably an overpay under the current NBA salary cap, may not look as bad once the league's money from an impending new TV deal kicks in.

It behooves Los Angeles to match whatever offer sheet is tendered the 25-year-old shooting guard's way, considering just how great Reaves looked for the Purple and Gold from the February 9th trade deadline onward.

Are you following us on Twitter, Facebook, or YouTube yet? Join the conversation as we discuss the latest Lakers news and rumors with fans like you!