In the latest installment of the NBA Front Office series, Tom Penn (playing the role of GM), Chad Ford (assistant GM), Amin Elhassan (scouting director), Kevin Pelton (analytics director) and David Thorpe (senior consultant) take over the Los Angeles Lakers and New York Knicks, who play each other Thursday night.
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Tom Penn: We're taking over both the Los Angeles Lakers and New York Knicks today. It's a mess on both coasts. How do we fix it? Chad, let's start with the Lakers. What do we look like there?
Chad Ford: The obvious major liability is Kobe Bryant's $25 million salary next season. That is a massive hit on our cap room, which means that we'll have about $18 million to play with. It could be $9 million more if we decline Jordan Hill's team option. Our next highest-paid player is Nick Young at $5.2 million, and he hasn't had a great season for that price.
We do have Julius Randle. A lot of people thought that he could go as high as No. 2 in the draft. Because of how Kentucky plays, and it has so much talent on its teams, sometimes the stats don't jump out at you the same way that they might with other players. But he's one asset we should be excited about. Jordan Clarkson actually has played quite well, too. He's top five for PER for rookies this season. He's a combo guard playing point guard, and I'm not sure that he's a great player on a good team. But he has shown promise. So I think those are the two guys who are nice pieces. But none of those guys are cornerstone-type of players.
We're likely going to have a top-four pick in this draft; if it falls below No. 5, we have to send it to Philadelphia. The odds of that right now are at about 17 percent. That means we're most likely going to keep it. And this is a good draft. Within the top four, you're talking about Karl-Anthony Towns, Jahlil Okafor, D'Angelo Russell or Emmanuel Mudiay. I think those are the consensus top-four guys. We'll likely get the Rockets' pick this year, and its lottery-protected.
After 2015-16, it's pretty much a blank slate. Really, Young, Randle and our 2015 No. 1 pick will be the only guys on the roster. So from a financial standpoint, we're not the Brooklyn Nets -- we'll be fine down the road. And Los Angeles remains an attractive market for free agents.