Cavs shouldn’t worry about the Lakers pursuing Collin Sexton

The Cleveland Cavaliers have a number of important decisions to make this summer, and perhaps the most important is what to do with Collin Sexton. The negotiations with Sexton and his agent, Rich Paul, will determine whether or not Sexton is with the Cavs next season, and whether Cleveland mortgaged the future to keep him around.

Sexton, rightfully so, will use every bit of leverage he has to get a solid contract, from historical comps for a player who averaged over 24 points per game at his age, to pointing to other recent deals for players like Terry Rozier, but especially any outside leverage he can find.

Outside leverage in contract negotiation is the idea that the Cavs have to pay Sexton or “someone else will.” In such a situation it helps if there is actually a team interested, and if that team has the ability to make the contract offer alleged. Sexton’s agency Klutch has a well-known connection that may be providing that service to Sexton’s camp.

The rumors that a certain West Coast NBA team is interested in Collin Sexton are meaningless. The Cavs shouldn’t worry about the Los Angeles Lakers.

It has been reported that the Los Angeles Lakers have an interest in adding Collin Sexton. Any team looking to improve its offense likely has “in interest” in Sexton, but this one makes a lot of sense. The Lakers need to improve a team that missed the play-in game entirely last year and they love to add Klutch players because of the LeBron James connection.

If this rumor was about the Detroit Pistons or San Antonio Spurs having interest in Collin Sexton, the Cavs might need to worry. Those teams have cap space, which means they could sign Sexton to a hefty offer sheet that the Cavs would be hard-pressed to match. That’s effective external leverage; the Cavs offer $16 million per season, Sexton’s camp leaks that the Pistons are interested and would sign him for $22 million per season, and since that could credibly happen the Cavs raise their offer to $19 million rather than risk Sexton signing that offer sheet.

The Lakers have no cap space; in fact they have the very opposite of cap space, sitting over the cap after just three contracts are added up: LeBron James, Anthony Davis and Russell Westbrook. Add in Talen Horton-Tucker and all the minimum contracts needed to fill out the roster and they are already in the luxury tax.

The most they could offer Sexton is the Taxpayer Mid-Level Exception, which starts at $6.34 million; that’s less than Sexton’s Qualifying Offer of $7.22 million. There is absolutely no chance he would sign such a contract, and the Cavs would match it in a heartbeat if he did.

The way that teams over the cap can make a play for a restricted free agent is often a sign-and-trade; a team gets to avoid the hassle of an offer sheet by sending assets to the player’s former team, and that team sign-and-trades the restricted free agent to the second team, often for more than they could otherwise pay. That is how Lauri Markkanen joined the Cavs last offseason.

That isn’t an option here, or at least not a realistic one. If you add a player via sign-and-trade you are “hard-capped” at the tax apron, which is $155.2 million for next season. The only way the Lakers could add Sexton via sign-and-trade and fit him under the apron would be to send one of their three big contracts to the Cavs.

LeBron James returning is unlikely but theoretically possible; we dig into that possibility here, as well as providing some more salary cap context. Yet outside of a few veiled comments during All-Star Weekend there is no reason to expect that LeBron is going to force his way out, so let’s discard that route for the moment.

If they are keeping LeBron they are keeping Anthony Davis, so therefore this comes down to Russell Westbrook. The only way the Lakers can add Collin Sexton is via a sign-and-trade where Russell Westbrook (and presumably a pair of first-round picks) go to Cleveland, and Sexton and other salary goes back to the Lakers. That could reduce the Lakers’ salary enough to slip under the apron.

There is no chance the Cavs are doing that. Every NBA team has watched Russell Westbrook destroy multiple teams by his glaring weaknesses as a player. The Lakers were terrible with Westbrook on the court last season and only mediocre without him because of the lack of rotation players they had due to adding Westbrook. It was ugly and has stayed ugly. When we ranked the 30 best point guards in the NBA this week, Westbrook was left (just) off the list.

Westbrook has name value but his on-court play just hasn’t matched his stardom for years now, and the entire league, including Cleveland, knows that. The Cavs are fighting to compete next season, and they won’t introduce Westbrook into the mix — especially not at the cost of alienating Darius Garland and drilling a hole in their defense big enough for a truck to drive through.

There is no realistic way for the Lakers to acquire Collin Sexton this offseason. They have the glamour of a team that could provide outside leverage to Sexton in contract negotiations, but Koby Altman and the Cavs shouldn’t fear them at all. This is a baseless rumor in the best case and an insane pipe dream of Rob Pelinka’s in the worst, and it’s not happening.