According to "The Athletic" reporter Shams Charania, after multiple rounds of negotiations, the Lakers finally succeeded in renewing Popper, and the two sides reached a three-year contract extension worth $40 million. The last year of the
contract is partly guaranteed, and in the first two years of the contract, Popper’s average salary reached 15 million US dollars.
James and Dudley also congratulated Pope on social media as soon as they signed the contract.
Shams followed up and reported that after helping the Lakers win the championship, many teams in the league intended to get Pope, but in the end the Lakers managed to leave the champion.
played for the Lakers last season and during the regular season, Pope averaged 9.3 points, 2.1 rebounds and 1.6 assists per game.
entered the playoffs, his role positioning has been further improved, the data has also risen to an average of 10.7 points, 2.1 rebounds and 1.3 assists per game.
Therefore, this is a very important contract extension for the Lakers, especially since the team has already sent off another wing player Green in the previous trade, plus Rondo and Bradley. Two old players have been poached, Pope needs to take on more offensive and defensive responsibilities in the new season.
After the Lakers signed with Pope, the core 10-man lineup has been released.
is first of all nine players with a guarantee contract for the Lakers: James, Schroder, McGee, Kuzma, Caruso, Tucker, Pope, Matthews and Harrell. Z2z
plus the thick eyebrows who will definitely complete the contract renewal work, there are a total of ten people.
The defender has Schroder + Caruso + Tucker, the forward swingman has Matthews + Pope, the striker has James + Kuzma + thick eyebrows, and the inside has McGee + Harrell.
is not difficult to see that the current overall configuration of the Lakers is very complete.
However, Pop's contract renewal is relatively expensive, which may cause certain problems in the Lakers' subsequent lineup reinforcement work.
According to the previous report by Brian Windhorst, because the Lakers signed Matthews with a bi-annual exception, the team triggered a hard salary cap (138.6 million). Before Pope did not sign, he would sign a maximum salary of 32.7 million. To calculate the maximum salary, the Lakers only have 16 million salary space available. According to the current contract details, the Lakers have almost no room to complete the follow-up reinforcement work after signing Popper.
Before Popper's contract renewal, salary expert Bobby Marks analyzed the salary situation of the Lakers and pointed out that the Lakers can only provide Popper with a contract of $12 million if the hard salary cap is triggered.
If the Lakers choose the highest contract of 12 million, then the team still has room to use four veteran base salary to fill the remaining vacancies in the lineup. If
does not renew Popper, you can use the basic salary of 5 veterans + transactions to complete the lineup reinforcement.
After Popper’s contract renewal, salary expert Bobby Marks further pointed out that unless Pope’s contract starting salary is 12 million, Brother Nongmei can only cut his salary in order to preserve the team’s current lineup and complete subsequent reinforcements.
Because in the case of the Pope contract with a starting salary of 12 million, the Lakers have room to sign 4 veteran base salaries, and after signing the 4 veteran base salaries, the total salary of the team is only 75,000 dollars from the hard salary cap.
Therefore, after the news was exposed, reporter Vinay Killawala followed up and pointed out that the Lakers may need to trade to make room for subsequent signings.
McGee, who chose to execute the player option, was named by Vinay Killawala, who thought McGee was the player most likely to be sent away. Bobby Marks also gave the same view.
