{"id":90716,"date":"2025-08-18T00:56:07","date_gmt":"2025-08-18T00:56:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/90716\/"},"modified":"2025-08-18T00:56:07","modified_gmt":"2025-08-18T00:56:07","slug":"rui-hachimura-is-playing-for-his-future-with-the-lakers-this-season","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/90716\/","title":{"rendered":"Rui Hachimura is playing for his future with the Lakers this season"},"content":{"rendered":"

Rui Hachimura has been an important part of the Los Angeles Lakers’ process for the last two and a half seasons, since he arrived in Southern California back in January 2023. If he puts up another solid campaign in the upcoming season, there’s a very real argument to be made that he deserves another multi-year deal to stay with the Lakers<\/a>. <\/p>\n

I can’t take credit for bringing up this topic of discussion, as The Athletic’s Dan Woike first mentioned it in a recent article<\/a>. But essentially, I’m here to echo his point of view and emphasize just how important the 2025-26 campaign might be for Hachimura. <\/p>\n

As Woike points out, Hachimura has been one of the Lakers’ biggest front office wins of the last several years. He’s been an extremely reliable marksman from three-point range, and his defensive contributions have been perhaps the biggest surprise. <\/p>\n

One more solid season from Hachimura could warrant an extension<\/p>\n

The concerns that some fans have with bringing him back involve the potential financial restrictions that it could create. But I’d agree with Woike’s suggestion that one more solid season from Hachimura could warrant re-signing him, even if it does end up tanking some of their cap flexibility down the line. The reason why I say that is twofold. <\/p>\n

Firstly, if Hachimura were to get an extension, I’d imagine LA would look to get him back on a deal in the range of four years and $80 million. That’s just an approximation, but I would assume his average yearly pay would go up compared to what he’s earning now, and he could very well get an additional year as well. <\/p>\n

In the grand scheme of things, that’s not that bad of a blow for the Lakers’ payroll to take. Hachimura is a proven rotation guy that thrives alongside Luka Doncic, which brings me to my second point. In the modern financial landscape in the NBA, you’re going to have to pay some players more than you would like, so why not do it for the ones that are already proven to work in your system? <\/p>\n

It doesn’t currently look as if Rui will earn an extension<\/a> before the upcoming season begins. That reinforces our previous view of things, which is that the upcoming campaign will basically determine Hachimura’s direction. Should he put up another efficient shooting season and remain a reliable defensive option, it would be hard to think the Lakers wouldn’t find a way to extend him one way or another. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Rui Hachimura has been an important part of the Los Angeles Lakers’ process for the last two and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":90717,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[64],"tags":[355,99],"class_list":["post-90716","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-nba","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90716","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=90716"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90716\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/90717"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=90716"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=90716"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=90716"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}