The NBA trade deadline went off the rails Tuesday, and it still hasn’t recovered.
Jaren Jackson Jr. is now on the Jazz. Anthony Davis is now on the Wizards?! Darius Garland is on the Clippers? James Harden is a Cavalier? And the Sixers gifted the defending champions Jared McCain so they could duck the luxury tax? (Well, that last one isn’t that surprising.)
The Lakers even jumped into the fray Thursday, sending Gabe Vincent and their 2032 second-round pick to the Atlanta Hawks for Luke Kennard. Both
Kennard and Vincent are on expiring contracts, so this move didn’t cut into the Lakers’ precious cap space this offseason.
In the meantime, the Lakers should be thankful that other teams have been aggressive at the trade deadline. Their wheeling and dealing has drastically reshaped the 2026 free-agency landscape.
That’s good news for the Lakers’ (already strong) chances of re-signing Austin Reaves this offseason.
The trade deadline shakeup
In early November, Spotrac’s Keith Smith posted some initial cap-space projections for the 2026 offseason. Six teams made the cut: The Wizards ($80.9 million), Clippers ($67.6 million), Lakers ($55.6 million), Jazz ($48.4 million), Nets ($44.4 million) and Bulls ($35.0 million).
The Wizards have since burned all of that projected cap space on their acquisitions of Davis and Trae Young. Unless Young leaves in free agency this offseason, the Wizards are no longer even a remote threat to throw a bag at Reaves.
The same goes for the Jazz, who just burned their cap space on JJJ. If anything, that deal may work the other way on them. Not only can they no longer offer Reaves a huge contract, but the Lakers may now be able to pry Walker Kessler away in free agency by throwing a massive offer sheet at him in restricted free agency.
The Clippers still have John Collins’ $26.6 million contract coming off their books and $31.1 million in team options between Bogdan Bogdanović, Brook Lopez and Nic Batum. However, they now have Garland’s $42.2 million in guaranteed salary on their books for 2026-27. Harden only has $13.3 million of his $42.3 million salary guaranteed, which appears to have been the beginning of the end for his time in L.A.
Once the dust settles on the Bulls’ whirlwind of activity, they figure to still have a sizable amount of cap space as long as they let all of their players on expiring contracts go. However, they’ve acquired a number of guards ahead of the trade deadline, including Anfernee Simons, Jaden Ivey and Rob Dillingham. Will they still have interest or the roster makeup to make a big run at Reaves?
The Hawks also still project to have some cap space, although they wiped out a fair bit of it Wednesday night by acquiring Buddy Hield ($9.7 million next year) and Jonathan Kuminga for Kristaps Porziņģis’ expiring contract. If the Hawks plan to re-sign Kuminga — or just pick up their $24.3 million team option on him—that will likely slam the door on any chances they had of signing Reaves.
The Nets haven’t cut into their offseason spending power yet, but they’re in the early stages of a rebuild and just spent approximately 17 first-round picks on guards this past June. Reaves might not prefer to join a team that far away from contention unless its offer was far better than any other.
The Lakers’ outlook
There have been zero indications to date that Reaves is seriously entertaining the prospect of leaving the Lakers this summer in free agency. In fact, he’s said quite the opposite, and all indications have been that he wants to remain with the Lakers.
Reaves will be an unrestricted free agent once his declines his $14.9 million player option, so he could leave them empty-handed if he does sign elsewhere this offseason. The lack of rumors about his future can only mean good things for the Lakers, though. It wouldn’t be a surprise if Reaves and the Lakers already had a basic understanding of what his next contract will look like.
If teams thought Reaves was a real flight risk, more of them might have lined up their books for a run at him in free agency. Instead, with the high-end soon-to-be free agents already flying off the board, most cap-space teams just went with the “pre-agency” approach at the trade deadline.
That doesn’t mean the Lakers are free to lowball Reaves, though. If the Lakers try to take advantage of his dwindling number of potential suitors, his agent could start sniffing around other teams and encouraging them to free up more cap space. As the Milwaukee Bucks proved last year when they waive-and-stretched Damian Lillard to sign Myles Turner, it only takes one wild card for a team’s best-laid plans to go awry.
Reaves is critical to the Lakers’ offseason plans, specifically from an order-of-operations standpoint. His $20.9 million salary-cap hold is far lower than what his next contract figures to begin at. The Lakers can spend their cap space first and then re-sign Reaves once they’re over the cap.
If Reaves wasn’t on board with that plan, he could blow up their entire strategy. Much like Tyrese Maxey and the Sixers a few years ago, there’s likely a mutual understanding of how much Reaves will cost on his next contract.
Even if negotiations do take a hard left turn at some point, the Lakers can rest easy in knowing that the pool of potential threats for Reaves is already thinning out.
Unless otherwise noted, all stats via NBA.com, PBPStats, Cleaning the Glass or Basketball Reference. All salary information via Spotrac and salary-cap information via RealGM.
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