Los Angeles Lakers: Three better free agents that should’ve been signed
By Jason Reed
While the Los Angeles Lakers did have the best signing of the summer in LeBron James, the team could have done better with the other signings it made.
No matter what the Los Angeles Lakers did after signing LeBron James, the team is inevitably going to be much better next season than it was last season. Adding the best player on the planet to an already very talented young core is going to produce results. Results that will likely be better than most think.
After signing LeBron, it was the front office’s job to bring in complementary pieces to help fill out roster depth; the front office did just that. Entering the season, the Lakers have 13 men that could produce and fill out the rotation.
Those men, in no particular order, are Lonzo Ball, Josh Hart, Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, Brandon Ingram, James, Kyle Kuzma, JaVale McGee, Rajon Rondo, Lance Stephenson, Michael Beasley, Ivica Zubac, Moritz Wagner and Sviatoslav Mykhailiuk.
Granted, not all 13 men are going to have a huge role but the front office made sure the Lakers were one of the deepest teams in basketball.
That does not mean that all the signings were great signings, though. While the front office did a decent job, it also could have pursued better free agents than some of the ones the team signed.
There are outside factors that could have attributed to this, such as length of contract or the sum of the contract. However, better options still existed.
For simplicity sake, we are not including restricted free agents and will not include those free agents that walked away from Los Angeles (Isaiah Thomas, Julius Randle, Brook Lopez etc.).