What do you think about the Laker team now?

You follow the box scores of the games every day?

Just the Lakers.

You're kidding.

That is really a compliment.

I was pleased to see you smile at the top bar show because once the game starts, you have a game face.

You don't smile much out there.

I don't think you have to do things for money anymore. Correct. What's up, Laker fans? Welcome to the Laker Film Room podcast. I'm Pete, joined by Darius and Mike. And today we're going to preview Free Agency. We are recording this a little bit early. We did not have the decisions yet on Mobamba or Malik Beasley. but in today's pod we're going to get into the, you know, Lakers Free Agency coming up, which I think is going to be a lot of talk about the Lakers' own guys. A bit of a housekeeping, if you're a new listener, all three of us work for the team. And one of the very few restrictions that we have with that is that we can't be like, hey, we should sign this guy that plays for the other team. We could be like, oh, we should re-sign Austin Reeves.

That's totally fine. very few restrictions that we have with that is that we can't be like, hey, we should sign this

guy that plays for the other team. We could be like, oh, we should re-sign Austin Reeves. That's totally fine. But we can't be like, hey, let's go sign this player for this other team. And so, we will talk about player archetypes. If we talk about a big stretch five or something like that, you can look at the free agent list and figure out who we're

talking about.

There aren't a whole ton of guys, but that's generally how it works.

And then on a league-wide basis, there are two things going on.

For one, the league is operating under a new collective bargaining agreement, which will factor

into this free agency.

One of the big elements of

it is the two aprons for the luxury tax. And the long and short of it is the first one, it's a little

less punitive now to be in the luxury tax a little bit, but it's a lot more punitive to be in the

luxury tax on that second apron. And so a lot of teams, I think Brian Winhorse has talked about

this a bit, are going to be operating as though that second apron is a hard cap and try to stay

underneath that number. So with all of that said, you are de facto salary cap expert here.

I have some questions around the MLE. There's like two different versions of the MLE that the Lakers can access, set up kind of like the tools that the Lakers have at their disposal. Can I say really quickly about the new CBA? The league will be operating under a new CBA, a CBA that people don't have yet, apparently. Yes, that's right. From the listing around like national pods that I've been doing, apparently

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