Keeping LeBron James isn't Los Angeles Lakers top offseason priority

[ASFN Admin]

You must be registered for see images attach

Keeping LeBron James isn't Los Angeles Lakers top offseason priority originally appeared on The Sporting News. Add The Sporting News as a Preferred Source by clicking here.

When it comes to the Los Angeles Lakers' offseason, trying to retain superstar forward LeBron James isn't the top priority for the team.

That designation would go to keeping star guard Austin Reaves.

Austin Reaves, not LeBron James, is Lakers' offseason priority​

NBA reporter Jovan Buha recently broke down L.A.'s approach to the offseason, and why Reaves is the top priority.

"Reaves is more of a priority for the Lakers than LeBron is. That's just a fact. The second part of it is that Reaves is going to have a market. And LeBron—maybe he wants to go to Chicago, or Brooklyn, I do not foresee that—but the issue with LeBron is that all of the teams that are going to want LeBron are going to have somewhere between a vet minimum offer and a non-taxpayer mid-level exception offer," Buha said, via Bleacher Report.

"So LeBron can't leverage the market against the Lakers the same way Reaves can. Reaves can go get a monster contract offer from Chicago or Brooklyn, and put pressure on the Lakers."

This reporting jives with a previous report from ESPN’s Dave McMenamin that suggested that Reaves, and not James, it the team's top priority.

This isn't especially surprising. Reaves will never be the level of player that James is, but he's also over a decade younger, so he has a much longer future ahead of him in L.A. than James does.

But, just because James isn't the team's top priority doesn't mean that he won't be back with the Lakers. On the contrary, Lakers general manager Rob Pelinka has made it clear that he would like to keep James and purple-and-gold.

"He's given so much to his teammates, to this organization. And the thing we want to do more than anything else is honor him back," Pelinka said of James last month.

"Of course, any team, including ours, would love to have LeBron James on their roster. That's a blessing in itself just with what he does."

More NBA news:

• Dallas Mavericks' Kyrie Irving provides major offseason injury update
• Anthony Davis reveals which Lakers player he misses the most, and it's not LeBron James
• Cleveland Cavaliers' James Harden provides NBA retirement timeline
• New Orleans Pelicans new head coach reveals plan for Zion Williamson
• Nikola Jokic's backup gets brutally honest about his future with Denver Nuggets

Continue reading...