# Lakers Looking To Dump Salary?



## Basel (Mar 31, 2005)

> With a league high payroll of $91 million, the Lakers are looking again to shed salary off their bench, and GM Mitch Kupchak has told teams to take its pick of reserve players - except for Lamar Odom, of course - to relieve the team of some salary. That idea worked out last season, when losing the salary of Vladimir Radmanovic to Charlotte unearthed the valuable Shannon Brown for the Lakers.


At the bottom: http://sports.yahoo.com/nba/news?slug=aw-tradebuzz120309&prov=yhoo&type=lgns


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## afobisme (Apr 29, 2006)

washington is trying to unload mike james, but i don't see them taking sasha for him. 

we could add farmar in the mix though. farmar + vujacic for mike james (expiring). this will help us re-sign other more important players.


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## Silk D (Feb 6, 2006)

eff that, and eff Jerry Buss for thinkin about how much money he can save when the team's coming off a championship and being favored to repeat. I know, it's not our money...blah blah blah, whatever. Obviously if someone will give us an expiring for Sasha, Ammo, or even Luke, then we should probably take it. but if we have to give up one of our rotation players, I'll be very upset. it's not broke dam it, don't fix it.


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## afobisme (Apr 29, 2006)

the team's probably going to let farmar walk anyways, might as well trade him with sasha for an expiring. of course as a fan you don't really care about money, but jerry buss does. and in order to keep pau/kobe, salary must be shed.

if i could save jerry buss over 5 million, i'd do it.. it would make him more willing to pay/overpay pau and kobe. it's totally worth it for a marginal player (farmar) and a cancerous player (sasha).

anyways, i don't see how you can complain about jerry buss. lakers right now have the highest payroll, so he was willing to pay players more than any other team in the league. what more do you want him to do?


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## Lynx (Mar 6, 2004)

Yeah..giving Lakers management history, I don't think we'll break our rotation. I'd dump Sasha, Morrison for zilch, anyway.


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## Silk D (Feb 6, 2006)

afobisme said:


> the team's probably going to let farmar walk anyways, might as well trade him with sasha for an expiring. of course as a fan you don't really care about money, but jerry buss does. and in order to keep pau/kobe, salary must be shed.
> 
> if i could save jerry buss over 5 million, i'd do it.. it would make him more willing to pay/overpay pau and kobe. it's totally worth it for a marginal player (farmar) and a cancerous player (sasha).
> 
> anyways, i don't see how you can complain about jerry buss. lakers right now have the highest payroll, so he was willing to pay players more than any other team in the league. what more do you want him to do?


If that's true, then both Jordan and Sasha will be gone by the time Kobe and Pau's extensions kick in anyways. so you tell me what the benefit is of shedding their salary in regards to those two. You're right, i could care less if Buss' bank account has $500 million instead of $505 million. gtfo

wrong again. Buss is going to play his cards the same way, no matter what they are. Kobe's got all the cards in his negotiation and, albiet to a lesser extent, so does Pau. so those negotiations are going to go the way they always wouldn've regardless if Buss has $5 mil extra in his pocket. This reminds me of this summer when I was upset when we didn't draft Blair (who ironically would've been a nice trade chip to shed some salary) and everyone told me that we couldn't take on more salary because we have to resign Lamar and Trevor. I said that regardless of what happens outside of the situation, if Trevor demands too much, Buss STILL won't pay him. and if lamar demanded too much, Buss wouldn't have paid him either. 

I'm not complaining about Buss, I just don't want him to sacrifice some of our depth when we have such a great chance to repeat. wtf? any owner who could afford it would pay this much for this level of talent. there's only two overpaid players on our team and that's Sasha and Ammo, and you can make a case for Andrew.


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## afobisme (Apr 29, 2006)

imo we actually don't know how things would have turned out had dr. buss not raised the funds he did last summer.


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## Pinball (Aug 3, 2002)

Hopefully, we won't Odom, Farmar, MBenga, and Brown. The rest of the guys are superfluous. Luke and Sasha make big bucks too. Phil has an affinity for Luke but I can see Sasha and Morrison being dealt.


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## elcap15 (Aug 8, 2006)

We could trade Sasha, Ammo, Luke and not even notice it. Im thinking Farmar would have to be included in any trade as he's the only one with any real potential, and an expiring contract himself. If Farmar goes, I think we would need someone to replace him

I dont think Luke goes anywhere.


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## afobisme (Apr 29, 2006)

no one in their right mind would want sasha and/or luke. who in their right mind would want any of those 2 players?

ammo's already an expiring, so getting rid of him wouldn't be a salary dump. it would be an investment from another team, so we could get something (probably very marginal though) from ammo. i guess sasha + ammo for a 9.5m-10m expiring would be ideal, since it would get rid of sasha and cut him from next year's salary.


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## Silk D (Feb 6, 2006)

actually Ammo will be a RFA and will most likely take the $6.9 mil qualifying offer since he won't get anything close to that in the market. so, he's not expiring. he and sasha could be some decent trade chips this summer if we try to make a move to bring in a PG, but I doubt Buss will be anxious to bring in more guarenteed contracts.


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## Hyperion (Dec 5, 2006)

I don't think anyone is crying for the Lakers, financially or talent wise. If you were to calculate the average ticket gross with average attendance, the Lakers lead the league in revenue. They make around 90 million from the gate alone. That's not even including shared profits from tv and merchandise money!


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## Jamel Irief (May 19, 2002)

afobisme said:


> the team's probably going to let farmar walk anyways, might as well trade him with sasha for an expiring. of course as a fan you don't really care about money, but jerry buss does. and in order to keep pau/kobe, salary must be shed.
> 
> if i could save jerry buss over 5 million, i'd do it.. it would make him more willing to pay/overpay pau and kobe. it's totally worth it for a marginal player (farmar) and a cancerous player (sasha).
> 
> anyways, i don't see how you can complain about jerry buss. lakers right now have the highest payroll, so he was willing to pay players more than any other team in the league. what more do you want him to do?


Lame. 

Buss is making a profit on the Lakers with or without the bench players salary.

If I owned the Lakers I would do anything outside of LOSE money to build a winner.

If you think about us FANS lose money on the Lakers every year. We buy tickets, merchandise, etc. If we owned the team would we run it as a business or as fans? Especially if we already had millions?

Screw your financial woes Buss! Resign Kobe and Pau!


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## afobisme (Apr 29, 2006)

maybe i'm not as good a laker as fan as many here, because if i owned the team i would definitely spend quite a bit.. but how much money i make would still be important to me.

the only fan/owner i can think of that doesn't mind breaking even is mark cuban.. but he's got way more money than dr. buss to begin with.

actually dolan blew a lot of money on the knicks, but wasn't it partially owned by cablevision or something like that?


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## JYD (Sep 3, 2002)

Silk D said:


> actually Ammo will be a RFA and will most likely take the $6.9 mil qualifying offer since he won't get anything close to that in the market. so, he's not expiring. he and sasha could be some decent trade chips this summer if we try to make a move to bring in a PG, but I doubt Buss will be anxious to bring in more guarenteed contracts.


wait, i thought we didn't have to extend the 6.9 qualifying offer to him. can't we just let him walk? if we extended it he would be RFA. if not, then he's URFA, am I right?


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## 77AJ (Feb 16, 2005)

Powell, Brown, and Odom are the only players off the Lakers bench any teams would be interested in.


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## Jamel Irief (May 19, 2002)

23AJ said:


> Powell, Brown, and Odom are the only players off the Lakers bench any teams would be interested in.


I can see teams take Mbenga and Farmar as well. Mbenga is the best 3rd string center in the league if that means anything. But combined those two make 3 million so that is a waste for the Lakers.


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## Jamel Irief (May 19, 2002)

afobisme said:


> maybe i'm not as good a laker as fan as many here, because if i owned the team i would definitely spend quite a bit.. but how much money i make would still be important to me.
> 
> the only fan/owner i can think of that doesn't mind breaking even is mark cuban.. but he's got way more money than dr. buss to begin with.
> 
> actually dolan blew a lot of money on the knicks, but wasn't it partially owned by cablevision or something like that?


If I had other business ventures like Buss does I certainly would view owning the Lakers as a hobby more than a business. If it was my only source of money I would still take some extra hits financially to assure a winner and chalk it up as a entertainment expense.


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## Pinball (Aug 3, 2002)

Jamel Irief said:


> Lame.
> 
> Buss is making a profit on the Lakers with or without the bench players salary.
> 
> ...


I'm with you. Maybe I'm spoiled from living in this area but you have to admire how much money the Yankees out into their team every year. I'm not a fan but it must be nice to know you are going to have the best team on paper every season. I know Buss isn't Oprah but the Lakers probably generate massive revenues from ticket sales, concessions, merchandise, TV, etc. Are all the Dairy Queen nights with his teenage girlfriends really setting him back that much?


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## elcap15 (Aug 8, 2006)

To all you people who think you'd spend more than DR Buss let me ask you this.

Would you rather have the A) current Laker team OR B) the current Laker team - Sasha or Ammo + $12 million dollars?


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## Silk D (Feb 6, 2006)

JYD said:


> wait, i thought we didn't have to extend the 6.9 qualifying offer to him. can't we just let him walk? if we extended it he would be RFA. if not, then he's URFA, am I right?


I think you could be right, my bad. I think we have a deadline before he becomes unrestricted, so yeah, obviously we'll let him. 



> To all you people who think you'd spend more than DR Buss let me ask you this.
> 
> Would you rather have the A) current Laker team OR B) the current Laker team - Sasha or Ammo + $12 million dollars?


That's a no-brainer, but that offer is not and won't be on the table. we're talking about giving up any of our depth (i.e. farmar) just to same a few million for this season.


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## Jamel Irief (May 19, 2002)

elcap15 said:


> To all you people who think you'd spend more than DR Buss let me ask you this.
> 
> Would you rather have the A) current Laker team OR B) the current Laker team - Sasha or Ammo + $12 million dollars?


That doesn't seem to be the issue. The issue is dumping assets because you want to have enough to resign everyone. Sasha is not an asset anymore and AMMO never was.


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