The Los Angeles Lakers entered this offseason with two major holes and two means of filling them. Luka Dončić and Austin Reaves gave them the foundation of an elite offense, but in order to build a remotely viable defense, they needed both a long-term center and a long-term wing, if not several. To get those players, they had $50 million or so in cap space, two tradable first-round picks and three tradable first-round swaps. The ideal scenario would have been to spend the cap space addressing one problem and trade the picks to solve the other.
Doing so would have involved no small amount of risk. Teams are hoarding centers right now, and no high-level starters under contract at that position have moved this offseason. The only viable free agents available to them were Walker Kessler and Jalen Duren, both of whom were restricted free agents. The theoretical path the Lakers could have taken to adding one without sacrificing picks would have been a max offer sheet.
Going all-in on a center for Luka
Walker Kessler
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The Utah Jazz are never known to have offered Kessler more than $28 million per year. The Lakers could have offered Kessler a four-year max deal that would have paid him more than $44 million per year and dared Utah to match it. Doing so would have been a high-risk, high-reward maneuver. Had Utah matched, the Jazz would have kept him on those terms and the Lakers would not have been allowed to acquire Kessler through a separate trade for one year. Even if it hadn’t, the Lakers would have gotten Kessler on a significantly inflated contract. The catch: they would have kept their picks, freeing them up to use all of their remaining resources addressing the wing.
It would have been an all-or-nothing gambit. Instead, with Dončić making it clear he wanted an A-list center this offseason, the Lakers went all-in for Kessler, trading both of their available picks and two of their available swaps to get him on a more manageable, but still pricey, $130 million deal. That left them with more cap space to spend on other free agents, but basically no picks left to trade. The closest thing the Lakers got to a defensive wing in their free agent splurge would be Quentin Grimes, who has regressed a fair bit since his strong defensive start in New York and is guard-sized anyway.
Two-way wings are no longer optional for championship pursuits. The New York Knicks had OG Anunoby, Mikal Bridges and Josh Hart. The Oklahoma City Thunder had a veritable army of wings: Jalen Williams, Alex Caruso, Lu Dort and Cason Wallace among them. The Boston Celtics had Jrue Holiday, Jaylen Brown and Jayson Tatum. The Lakers currently have no wing as good as anyone on that list. Bringing Kessler on board on a more manageable salary might have left them the space to pursue on one on the market if he existed… but he didn’t. These players are in such high demand that they almost never move, and when they do, it’s through trade.
This is a problem for the Lakers because they have basically nothing left to trade with. Their lone remaining first-round draft asset is a 2032 swap. Not bad, especially with the lottery rules beyond 2029 undetermined. Not enough in a world in which Bridges went for five first-round picks. As of right now, the Lakers have no clear path to acquiring the sort of wings (and the defensive versatility they bring) they will need to seriously compete for a championship. They therefore have to tread less obvious ground.
And so, they reportedly look to Jonathan Kuminga. Nobody should be surprised by that reporting. The Lakers very clearly have a type. Rob Pelinka loves adding former lottery picks that flamed out with their first or second team. Malik Monk, Cam Reddish, Jaxson Hayes, Rui Hachimura, Mo Bamba and Deandre Ayton all fit the mold. The Lakers, historically, have been a “bet on the talent and figure out the fit later” sort of team.
How would Kuminga fit with the Lakers?
Jonathan Kuminga
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The basic thought process here makes sense. Jonathan Kuminga has the physical tools of an elite two-way wing. He’s flashed good defense for stretches. He’s a capable cutter, if not always a willing enough one. There is a chance that under the right circumstances, he could become for them what, say, Aaron Gordon became for the Denver Nuggets, or Andrew Wiggins became for the Golden State Warriors.
It’s a relatively small chance, of course. Kuminga literally played for the Warriors, and they did everything in their power to turn him into the sort of do-it-all weapon Wiggins once was for them. He seemingly wanted a role as a featured scorer. The Lakers obviously can’t offer that, and they just went through a version of this with Ayton a year ago, hoping they could harness his talent into the sort of long-term center they needed. “They’re trying to make me Clint Capela,” Ayton reportedly bristled. “I’m not no Clint Capela.”
Does Kuminga want to be the wing equivalent of Clint Capela? Only he knows the answer to that. Golden State could never make him that player. The Hawks had him in the building for three months and elected to decline his team option. What does that say about him at this stage of his career? Has his self-perception changed? Or does he want to use his free agency as a chance to get somewhere that will let him take the sort of shots he wants to take?
Again, only he can answer that, but the odds always work against teams under these circumstances. Asking a player to make wholesale stylistic changes, especially when they’re young and haven’t made their money yet, is a tough sell. Kuminga was the No. 7 overall pick in the NBA Draft, but because of the contending team with the unorthodox style he was drafted onto, has never had the sort of offensive opportunities a typical No. 7 overall pick would. He might be a far better player than he’s been able to prove in the NBA, though that seemingly gets less and less likely with each passing year. He’s running out of chances to break out as a typical high lottery pick would. He can always buy into defense and grunt work later. For now, if the chance to chase stardom still exists, it’s going to be hard to pass that up.
All of this makes Kuminga a risky bet for the Lakers. Here’s the catch: they don’t exactly have alternatives. Again, the sort of reliable, two-way wings the Lakers would probably prefer don’t become free agents and they don’t get traded for a single first-round swap. When your options are “players you know won’t be good enough” and “players who probably won’t be good enough,” well, players who probably won’t be good enough start to feel a whole lot more viable. The Lakers put themselves in this position with the Kessler sign-and-trade. They were always going to have to buy some lottery tickets on the wing.
Can the Lakers pay Kuminga enough to land him?
Which raises our next question: can the Lakers scrounge together enough money to even buy that ticket? As of right now, they’re basically at the cap. The reporting suggests that the Lakers are willing to offer Kuminga a two-year, $20 million deal. The path to creating that sort of cap space would probably start with dumping Jaden Hardy and Dalton Knecht. The Lakers have three second-round picks to do that with, and considering Dorian Finney-Smith got dumped at a similar price point in terms of salary and draft capital, that’s probably an attainable goal.
Of course, it’s possible and perhaps probable that Kuminga wants and can get more than that. The Lakers aren’t the only team in the market for wing lottery tickets. The Cleveland Cavaliers and Milwaukee Bucks are reportedly interested as well. The Lakers could shed another $7 million or so in money by waiving-and-stretching Jarred Vanderbilt… but that means leaving $5 million or so in dead money on their books for five more years. In the apron era, dead money is, well, death.
The alternative would be a sign-and-trade. If the Lakers sent Vanderbilt to Atlanta, they could bring Kuminga in at an appropriate salary, up to around $21.5 million. Good luck selling the Hawks on two more years of Vanderbilt money. According to The California Post, the Hawks are willing to participate… if they get that 2032 Lakers swap.
That’s a reasonable price for a contract like Vanderbilt’s, but it would be a bitter pill for the Lakers to swallow with no other first-round capital left to work with. Not only would that deprive the Lakers of their precious remaining first-round liquidity, but depending on the size of the contract, it could also make it harder for them to access their full mid-level exception next offseason, therefore complicating a wing pursuit in free agency next summer. Suddenly, this isn’t a lottery ticket price anymore.
Limited resources to spend on a limited talent pool. These are the rock and the hard place that the Lakers willingly stuck themselves between in order to land Kessler in the manner that they did. They went all-in on that transaction and now face the consequences. Kuminga isn’t exactly a safe wing bet, but he’s the only one we know to be available to them right now. Whether the Lakers make it or not, they’re facing long odds in solving their dire wing problem.
