LaVar Ball Predicts Zach LaVine Will Leave Bulls, Sign with Lakers as Free Agent
Zach LaVine will be a free agent this offseason, and the media darling of 2017, LaVar Ball, believes the Chicago Bulls star will be heading west to the Los Angeles Lakers.
Ball made that prediction during an appearance on the The ReKap (27:10 mark):
"He's gone. And I'm gonna tell you why. OK, it started off Zach LaVine, Zach LaVine, Zach LaVine. OK, now you get hurt, a few things happen, and guess who's doing all the big plays. All I hear is DeMar [DeRozan]. DeMar, DeMar, DeMar. He don't want to play second fiddle. And who don't want to go to L.A.? He wanna go back to the West Coast. ... If he got a chance to go there? I guarantee you he ain't no fool."
LaVine, who grew up in the Seattle suburbs and went to UCLA, might like to head back to the West Coast. Playing alongside superstars like LeBron James and Anthony Davis and chasing a title could be appealing (though if LaVine wasn't thrilled about becoming the No. 2 guy in Chicago, as Ball posited, how much would he enjoy being the third fiddle on the Lakers?). He might seek the glitz and glamor that comes with being a young, rich celebrity in a city like Los Angeles.
The issue, of course, is that the Lakers have basically no realistic path to clear the needed cap space to sign him.
Assuming Russell Westbrook opts in to his $47.1 million player option for the 2022-23 season—and no matter how bad this past campaign went, it wouldn't be worth leaving that much money on the table just to escape, considering he might not get half of it in free agency—the Lakers owe $139.9 million to just four players (Westbrook, James, AD and Talen Horton-Tucker). Kendrick Nunn also has a $5.3 million player option that could further bloat their cap sheet if he opts in.
That alone will take them well over the projected $122 million soft cap, meaning their only avenue for signing free agents is minimum contracts and the taxpayer mid-level exception. LaVine, meanwhile, is going to get the max.
One option would be a sign-and-trade deal in which Westbrook opts in, is dealt to the Bulls, and LaVine signs a max deal with Chicago (five years, $212 million) that would pay him $36.6 million next season before being traded to the Lakers.
But that is extremely unlikely.
For one, the Bulls would need to want Westbrook and his massive contract. With LaVar's son Lonzo Ball already in place at point guard, downgrading from LaVine to Westbrook while dipping deep into the luxury tax is nonsensical.
There's a pretty strong argument to be made that if the Bulls can't re-sign LaVine, they would be better off losing him in free agency and utilizing their remaining cap space elsewhere than they would be acquiring Westbrook in a sign-and-trade.
And even if the Lakers somehow pulled off that heist, they'd be hard-capped with a whole slew of roster slots to fill. The supporting cast could end up being thin like it was this season.
The other option would be for the Lakers to find a way to trade both Westbrook and Horton-Tucker to teams with ample cap space, which would give them the cap flexibility to then sign LaVine to a four-year, $157 million deal. Again, though, teams would make the Lakers hand over serious assets to take on that Westbrook contract, which L.A. simply doesn't have after giving up the farm to land Davis in 2019.
For rebuilding teams, cap space is an asset they can use to accumulate draft capital. Nobody is going to take on Westbrook's contract out of the goodness of their heart.
So even if LaVine actually wanted to get to Los Angeles, he would need the Bulls or some other team to help him out in a huge way. Given these particular circumstances, that feels incredibly unlikely, despite LaVar's prediction.
