2, but they never budged from their initial offer. Caruso was their first call in free agency on Aug. Faced with going deep into the luxury tax to retain one of their most valuable role players, the Lakers balked. Their offer stayed at $21 million over three years, and the moment calcified a perception that already existed. A $10 million per year offering would have been commensurate.Īgain, the Lakers said no. While the Bulls offer was for slightly less than $10 million over four years, only $30 million was guaranteed. After a lowball offer of $7 million a year from the Lakers to open free agency, Caruso brought the Lakers the offer presented to him by the Bulls in hopes they would match it:īut when Lawrence informed Caruso the Lakers would not match the offer, Caruso asked his agent to call back with a compromise: two years, $20 million. In the piece, Oram details the conversations between Caruso, the Lakers and the Bulls that largely backs up Caruso’s own telling of the talks during his podcast with Redick. Ahead of his return to Los Angeles for the first time since leaving the Lakers on Monday, Bill Oram of The Athletic wrote a more in-depth piece on Caruso’s free agency and, shockingly, it doesn’t get any better! Last week, Caruso revealed on a podcast with JJ Redick that the Lakers offered him less than a 2-year, $15-million contract in free agency, a startlingly low number. Not only a favorite amongst the fanbase but an acutely valuable piece of the Lakers’ title-winning team in 2020, Caruso leaving the Lakers to sign with the Bulls this summer stung on many levels.Įach passing report, then, serves as the salt poured directly into a wound that still hasn’t quite healed, largely due to how the Lakers approached Caruso’s free agency, an approach that might have been worse than we previously could have imagined. With each passing report, the story surrounding Alex Caruso’s departure from the Lakers this summer only seems to grow more and more frustrating for fans.
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