The LeBron James pay cut saga came to an end on Wednesday morning when it was announced that he is reportedly taking a two-year maximum contract to stay with the Los Angeles Lakers. The deal has a reported player option on the second year, meaning it is effectively a one-year deal, allowing James to take his career one season at a time from here on out.
This ended all speculation about James potentially taking a pay cut to give the Lakers some flexibility to add a player via sign-and-trade or using the non-taxpayer mid-level exception. With James’ full max, the Lakers no longer have the ability to sign a player even using the taxpayer mid-level exception, as they are now considered a team above the second apron.
The second apron is an extremely punitive threshold that the Lakers ideally would like to avoid. With James getting a full max, they are around $1.2 million over the second apron, meaning they’ll need to find some way to shed that small salary. One way, potentially, is for James to take a much smaller pay cut, according to Dan Woike of The L.A. Times:
According to people with knowledge of the talks but not authorized to speak publicly, the Lakers and James’ representatives are discussing the possibility of taking money off the two-year, $104-million max contract to keep the Lakers under the “second apron” for team payrolls.
Crossing that threshold, which is at $188.9 million, would severely limit the Lakers’ ability to add to their roster by placing restrictions on the kinds of trades the team makes, including adding players during the season.
Whether it’s through James’ contract or other deal restructuring, someone familiar with the Lakers’ situation but not authorized to speak publicly said the team will end up under the second apron.
The Lakers could easily dump one of their minimum contract players — Cam Reddish and Christian Wood chief among them — to a team to get below this threshold. But if they want to keep a full 15-man roster to increase flexibility for lineups and who they could include in a trade, perhaps James will take a small pay cut.
Bronny James not concerned about playing with LeBron James
Bronny James had his introductory press conference on Tuesday and unsurprisingly faced questions about playing alongside his father on the Lakers and how he’ll adjust to that. And while he admitted there is more pressure, his goal is to just focus on making his own name for himself and controlling what he can control.
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