Spencer Dinwiddie wants to come home to Los Angeles.
The guard declined his $12.3 million player option with the Brooklyn Nets and will enter this offseason as an unrestricted free agent.
One of his hometown teams, the Los Angeles Lakers, certainly are in the market for a point guard with Dennis Schroder’s future with the team up in the air.
While the Lakers may not have the cap space to sign Dinwiddie outright in free agency, they could find a way to work a sign-and-trade deal with the Nets to bring Dinwiddie to Los Angeles.
Dinwiddie missed most of the 2020-21 NBA season with a torn ACL, but he was actually eyeing a potential return to the Nets if they had made the NBA Finals this season.
That means that Dinwiddie would likely be a full go for the 2021-22 season, and he could make sense as the Lakers’ starting point guard if Schroder is out of the team’s price range.
Dinwiddie is going to want to get paid more than the $12.3 million option that he declined, but it’s hard to see him getting a max deal coming off such a major injury.
If he can sign a deal in the range of $18-20 million, the Lakers could facilitate a trade with the Nets to help them avoid losing Dinwiddie for nothing while also boosting their own backcourt.
Here are three deals the Lakers should make if Dinwiddie is willing to commit to a sign-and-trade to join the Lakers this offseason.
1. The Schroder-Dinwiddie swap
The most obvious move for the Lakers would be to swap Dinwiddie and Schroder in a sign-and-trade.
Schroder is looking for a major deal this offseason, and his struggles in the playoffs may have made the Lakers a little more comfortable with moving on from him.
If Los Angeles isn’t willing to give Schroder a contract bigger than the four-year, $84 million offer that it offered earlier in the 2020-21 season, then it’s possible that they move on from Schroder and take Dinwiddie in return.
If the Nets need to match salary in the case that Schroder is making more than Dinwiddie, Landry Shamet ($3.8 million) and DeAndre Jordan ($9.9 million) are pieces that could help them facilitate the deal.
The Lakers potentially have a major need at center, and nabbing Jordan and Dinwiddie for Schroder and a salary throw-in like Marc Gasol or Alfonzo McKinnie could make sense.
2. Moving on from Kyle Kuzma
It has been reported that LeBron James and Kyle Kuzma don’t exactly see eye to eye, which makes it all the more likely that Kuzma isn’t in Los Angeles next season.
Kuzma is set to make $13 million next season, and while he alone wouldn’t complete a deal for Dinwiddie, the Lakers could match his salary in a couple of ways.
First off, Los Angeles could try a Kuzma and Kentavious Caldwell-Pope package that would help bolster a Brooklyn bench that relied on Bruce Brown and Mike James for significant playoff minutes last season.
If Montrezl Harrell opts into his player option for next season, he could be another piece for the Lakers to include alongside Kuzma if they want to keep Caldwell-Pope.
By moving Kuzma and another player, the Lakers could absorb Dinwiddie’s eventual salary and potentially get a shooter like Shamet back in return as well.
It would also allow the Lakers the flexibility to pursue a reunion with Schroder if they wanted, or they could search for another sign-and-trade with Schroder to help fill the holes left by the departure of the pieces in the Dinwiddie deal.
The Lakers may not have a ton of options, but they certainly can get creative to get Dinwiddie on the roster here.
3. Maximizing Talen Horton-Tucker’s value
The Lakers are in a tough spot when it comes to Horton-Tucker, as it is possible another team offers him a major deal, or even a max deal, in free agency to pry him away from Los Angeles.
Horton-Tucker will be a restricted free agent, so the Lakers can match any offer for him, but they also could sign him to a long-term deal and trade him for Dinwiddie.
The Nets could use an intriguing young piece like Horton-Tucker, and it would likely allow them to keep the rest of their bench unit intact.
For the Lakers, it makes sense to maximize what you can get for Horton-Tucker, as he is an intriguing prospect, but still hasn’t fully blossomed into a proven piece that can help the Lakers win right now.
The financials would be interesting depending on how much Horton-Tucker commands in the open market, but the Lakers could do much worse than adding Dinwiddie in exchange for the up-and-coming guard.
