Similar to last season, this will be another campaign with mostly temporary hires. Is it a case of the Lakers looking forward to the future or part of a league-wide trend?
Eight members of last season’s injury-decimated, underachieving team are now back, but only five of 13 current players have contracts guaranteed beyond the upcoming season.
Kobe Bryant is heading into a two-year extension that will take him through his 20th and presumably final year in the NBA.
The Lakers’ No. 7 draft pick, Julius Randle, has a two-year deal with a team option for year three. As reported by Eric Pincus of the Los Angeles Times, Ed Davis was brought on board with a two-year contract. Ryan Kelly and Nick Young have been re-signed to two- and four-year deals, respectively.
Steve Nash, Carlos Boozer, Jeremy Lin, Jordan Hill, Wesley Johnson, Xavier Henry, Robert Sacre and Jordan Clarkson will all be under an assortment of one-year deals, some with a team option for a second year and most without.
To a large degree, this is part of the new NBA landscape under the current collective bargaining agreement, which makes it harder for teams to keep rosters together for extended periods of time.
In the upcoming update to his book 11 Rings: The Soul of Success, per the New York Daily News, Phil Jackson describes the way the CBA is affecting the Lakers and other teams:
Sadly, what inevitably is getting lost in this shift is a sense of continuity over time. Not only will the new agreement make it virtually impossible for teams — no matter how fat their wallets — to assemble lineups with more t...
Article Source: Bleacher Report - Los Angeles Lakers
