Tim Bontemps and Brian Windhorst<\/a>, the Lakers have hard-capped themselves below the NBA salary cap’s first apron, meaning they only have about $1 million of space currently.<\/p>\nThe Lakers also have little left in the way of draft capital, so they don’t have the assets or cap flexibility to beef up their roster in any significant way.<\/p>\n
An anonymous Western Conference executive further broke down the Lakers’ situation, telling Bontemps and Windhorst, “They just need to fast-forward to the offseason. They can’t realistically add to the roster. They don’t have a solve. They’re focused on keeping cap space and trying to do moves on the margins, and it’s hard to find a lot that makes sense.”<\/p>\n
The Lakers’ big move for the 2025-26 campaign was actually made last season when they shocked the basketball world by acquiring Luka Don\u010di\u0107 from the Dallas Mavericks in exchange for Anthony Davis, Max Christie and a first-round pick.<\/p>\n
On top of that, general manager Rob Pelinka was hard at work during the offseason, retaining LeBron James and signing both Deandre Ayton and Jake LaRavia.<\/p>\n
Although Austin Reaves is currently out with a calf injury, the Lakers have three players averaging at least 21 points per game in Don\u010di\u0107, James and Reaves.<\/p>\n
They are surrounded by a supporting cast of Ayton, LaRavia, Rui Hachimura, Marcus Smart and others, and it can be argued that the Lakers would benefit from improving their depth.<\/p>\n
However, if they remain committed to staying under the first apron, then adding pieces will be easier said than done.<\/p>\n
As they are currently constructed, the Lakers are the No. 5 seed in the Western Conference at 23-12, and they are only one game out of the No. 3 seed and two games out of No. 2.<\/p>\n
The current roster is undoubtedly good enough to reach the playoffs and potentially even win a round or two, but it is fair to wonder if they are capable of getting past a team like the reigning NBA champion Oklahoma City Thunder when push comes to shove.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Los Angeles Lakers have been among the top teams in the Western Conference this season, but making…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":403119,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[574],"tags":[64,63,726,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-403118","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-basketball","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-basketball","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/403118","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=403118"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/403118\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/403119"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=403118"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=403118"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=403118"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}