How the Lakers could gain access to the taxpayer midlevel exception

With only $45,000 to spare below the second apron, the Lakers must dump significant salary to gain access to the taxpayer MLE this offseason.

The Lakers currently find themselves $45,001 below the NBA’s $188.9 million second apron. If they somehow crossed that line, they wouldn’t be allowed to aggregate contracts in trades if they finished the deal over the second apron, among a bevy of other restrictions.

As a first apron team, the Lakers aren’t allowed to take back more salary than they send out in a trade, and they already have all 15 roster spots filled. In other words, LeBron James took just enough below his max to keep the Lakers below the second apron, which gives them additional flexibility to pursue midseason upgrades.

According to longtime NBA insider Marc Stein, they might not wait that long to make a move.

“The Lakers are known to be exploring pathways to shed some additional salary via trades to create sufficient wiggle room needed under the second apron to make use of their $5.2 million taxpayer mid-level exception. Yet even those kinds of moves likely require some form of second-round draft capital attached.”

The taxpayer MLE is $5.168 million this season, and teams that use it aren’t allowed to exceed the second apron at any point. The Lakers would need to cut at least $5.1 million in salary to gain access to the taxpayer MLE and stay below the second apron.

At the moment, the Utah Jazz and Detroit Pistons are the only two teams with at least $10 million in remaining cap space. The Jazz are likely saving most of theirs for a renegotiation-and-extension with Lauri Markkanen in early August, but the Pistons could be a viable salary-dumping ground.

Detroit could fit Gabe Vincent ($11.0 million) or Jarred Vanderbilt ($10.7 million) into its $11.5 million of cap space, which would give the Lakers more than enough room under the second apron to spend the taxpayer MLE. The question is whether the cost of salary-dumping either player outweighs the benefit they’d get from whomever they signed.

The Lakers could instead salary-dump Christian Wood ($3.0 million) and one of Jaxson Hayes ($2.5 million) or Cam Reddish ($2.5 million) to gain access to the taxpayer MLE. However, they’d be less than $400,000 below the second apron after spending it, which means they couldn’t sign another player to a rest-of-season contract until late in the year. They’d have to be comfortable rolling with 14 players this year, at least one of whom (Bronny James) would likely never see the floor except in garbage time.

According to Jovan Buha of The Athletic, the Lakers are likelier to pursue that route than dumping a bigger contract. He identified Wood and Reddish as the top two candidates.

“Now, maybe a team pushes to get Jaxson Hayes and when it comes down to it, the Lakers decided there isn’t much a difference between Hayes and Wood but my understanding, the Lakers would prioritize keeping Hayes in comparison with Hayes and Reddish.

Since Wood, Reddish and Hayes are all on minimum contracts, teams can absorb them even if they don’t have cap space. The only teams that can’t are the ones hard-capped at either apron, and only if acquiring them would push them over that apron. Still, it figures to cost second-round draft capital to move two of them, and the Lakers are already light on that. They can only trade their own second-rounders in 2025, 2030 and 2031, along with the Los Angeles Clippers’ 2025 second-round pick.

Is it worth spending one or two of those picks to gain access to the taxpayer MLE? That depends on whether the Lakers plan on pursuing larger deals at the trade deadline. If so, they might want to maintain their entire arsenal of draft capital in case they need it for a blockbuster move.

When guys like Gary Trent Jr. and Monte Morris are settling for minimum contracts, the Lakers might not even need the full taxpayer MLE. Their bigger issue right now is that they wouldn’t have a roster spot to offer even if they did want to sign someone. They’re also too close to the second apron to sign someone without cutting salary elsewhere.

The Lakers should at least survey the league to see what it’d take for them to get off Wood, Hayes or Reddish’s contracts. Depending on the result, it should at least be an option on the table if a too-good-to-be-true potential signing falls into their laps.

Unless otherwise noted, all stats via NBA.com, PBPStats, Cleaning the Glass or Basketball Reference. All salary information via Salary Swish and salary-cap information via RealGM.