Lakers News: Why Extending D'Angelo Russell Beats Letting Him Reach Free Agency

It may make sense to keep LA's starting point guard, at least for now.

Your Los Angeles Lakers have a variety of key roster decisions to make even before the official end of the 2022-23 NBA season on June 30th. Beyond team options on little-used role players Malik Beasley (for a whopping $16.5 million), Mo Bamba ($10.3 million) and Shaquille Harrison ($2.4 million), LA could also opt to extend starting point guard D'Angelo Russell before he even reaches free agency.

Per Yossi Gozlan of HoopsHype, inking D-Lo to an extension now could maximize Los Angeles' roster flexibility in July. That's because the team could trade him immediately, whereas allowing him to become an unrestricted free agent in July -- at least, without a sign-and-trade agreement already in place -- would impede LA's ability to move the one-time All-Star until December 15th. At that point, contracts agreed to during free agency could be flipped.

The 6'4" point guard out of Ohio State University enjoyed a solid regular season run with LA, averaging 17.4 points on .484/.414/.735 shooting splits, 6.1 assists, 2.9 rebounds, 0.6 steals and 0.5 blocks a night across the 17 contests he played. 

His output fell off significantly in the playoffs. Overall, he averaged just 13.3 points on .426/.310/.769 shooting splits, 4.6 dimes, 2.9 assists and 0.7 steals per contest, while struggling to defend opposing guards, in reduced minutes. When the team needed his scoring and passing the most, in the Western Conference Finals against the Denver Nuggets, even Russell's counting stats were awful. He averaged just 6.3 points on .323/.133/.750 shooting splits, 3.5 dimes, 2.0 rebounds, 0.5 steals and 0.6 blocks across just 23.5 minutes in the series.

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