The LA Lakers are attempting to go for a back-to-back championship run this year. The 2020 NBA champions have made several moves in order to replenish their championship-winning roster.

For the Lakers, one of the biggest challenges coming into this season was trying to clear cap space. They let go of players such as Rajon Rondo, Dwight Howard, Avery Bradley, and JaVale McGee in order to make room.

Another move that the Lakers attempted to make to create cap space was to offload Luol Deng’s salary from their books. The Lakers offered Deng a 4-year, $72 million contract in 2016.

In order to create cap space for the 2019 free agency, the Lakers waived Luol Deng. However, this meant that his remaining $15 million salary had to be paid by the Lakers across the 2019-20, 20-21, and 21-22 seasons. This was due to the Lakers employing what is known as the ‘Stretch Provision’.

The Lakers applied recently for a career-ending injury exception in order to get Deng’s salary off their books. The salary was eating into the Lakers’ cap. The career-ending injury exception allows teams to offload the salaries of a player that has not played on their team. The team needs to prove that the player suffered the injury with their team.

LA Lakers have no cap flexibility

The Lakers were always going to struggle to prove their case, as Deng played 22 games with the Minnesota Timberwolves after the Lakers. The maximum number of games one can take part in while still being eligible for the exception is 25.

While the Lakers were able to sneak past the maximum game number, the case did not look good for them. According to Shams Charania, the NBA rejected their application for the injured player exception.

The Lakers wanted to offload Deng’s contract from their books for many reasons, the first being their current season cap. After Montrezl Harrell signed with the Lakers as part of their mid-level exception, it set the Lakers’ hard cap apron at $138.9 million. The Lakers can’t exceed that limit under any circumstances, meaning they have no cap flexibility.

The lack of cap flexibility is why they were forced to trade JaVale McGee to Cleveland to make room for Marc Gasol’s contract. Given that Deng’s $5 million will be part of the cap, it makes trades and other maneuvers in the season very difficult for the Lakers.

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Additionally, the rejection of the application also complicates the Lakers’ free agency in 2021. If they wanted to land a big free agent such as Giannis, they would have to offload KCP and Montrezl Harrell (who has a player option) and convince LeBron James and Anthony Davis (who both will presumably opt-out) to take a pay cut in order to sign Giannis Antetokounmpo or a free agent of his caliber.

However, the LA Lakers were not trying to take money away from Deng. Deng is paid regardless of the NBA’s decision. They just wanted to take his $15 million out of their cap to create more flexibility.

The Lakers will now have to manage their cap very carefully in order to make the moves they want to. Until 2022, they must continue to have $5 million set aside in their cap to account for Deng’s wages. It will be interesting to see how the Lakers cope with this.