The Los Angeles Lakers have a pair of prominent free agents in LeBron James and Austin Reaves, and who they ultimately prioritize this summer may come as a surprise to some, as NBA reporter Jovan Buha elaborated upon on Friday. “There’s two big differences between LeBron and Reaves right now. One, LeBron is a short-term solution. Reaves is viewed by the franchise as a long-term cornerstone. So if it comes down to, would you rather pay Reaves $40 million for the next five years, or LeBron $40 million for one year, they’re going to prioritize the long-term contract here,” he noted (36:40 mark). “Reaves is more of a priority for the Lakers than LeBron is. That’s just a fact. The second part of it is that Reaves is going to have a market. And LeBron—maybe he wants to go to Chicago, or Brooklyn, I do not foresee that—but the issue with LeBron is that all of the teams that are going to want LeBron are going to have somewhere between a vet minimum offer and a non-taxpayer mid-level exception offer. So LeBron can’t leverage the market against the Lakers the same way Reaves can. Reaves can go get a monster contract offer from Chicago or Brooklyn, and put pressure on the Lakers to be like, ‘They’re about to pay me $40 million annually. Maybe I’ll take a [hair less] than that, but you need to give me that fifth year, and it needs to be pretty close to $40 million.’ Lebron is not going to have the same leverage.”
