The Los Angeles Lakers apparently paid far more than they wanted to in order to retain Austin Reaves.
The Lakers re-signed their homegrown star Reaves to a monster four-year, $185 million deal earlier this week. The humongous contract even ended up setting a notable all-time NBA record.
But that was not the price that the Lakers wanted to pay for Reaves. Speaking Thursday on “Get Up,” ESPN’s Brian Windhorst revealed that the Lakers had their price for Reaves get driven up by the Detroit Pistons.
Windhorst said that the Lakers originally offered Reaves a contract for around $30 million per year. However, the Lakers were reportedly forced within some 24 hours to increase their offer to that ultimate figure of over $46 million per year because the Pistons were already priming a max offer of their own for Reaves.
Indeed, Detroit was lining up their ducks for Reaves and even ended up trading away one prominent player in a salary dump to create some more cap space. But the Lakers then moved quickly to increase their offer to Reaves before the Pistons got a chance to tender their offer.
Reaves is obviously a big winner here, and his girlfriend even captured the exact moment that Reaves learned about his historic contract. But now the Lakers, who are also paying Luka Doncic around $53.5 million per season, are in a very tough position financially and may not be able to materially improve their roster otherwise this offseason (or to re-sign LeBron James, who was recently the subject of an interesting sign-and-trade scenario).
