The Los Angeles Lakers will pay a $ 5 million salary to a retired NBA player for a move they made to sign LeBron James in 2018.
In the NBA world, teams sometimes decide to gamble by taking on high contracts for league stars to come along and lead them to the championship. The Los Angeles Lakers took a chance using this method, signing Luol Deng in 2016 for $ 72 million.
The Lakers were confident that the former NBA forward and two-time All-Star would be an important piece in the rebuilding of the team, but after averaging 7.6 points and 5.3 rebounds in the first season with the Californian team, Deng decided to cut him in 2018 and extend the payment of the millions of the contract that remained pending for the arrival of LeBron James.
With this move, the Lakers will have to pay $ 5 million to Luol Deng in the 2021-22 season. In this way, the former player who retired from the NBA in the 2018-19 season will be the sixth highest paid basketball player for the LeBron and company version 21-22 team.
The news is so unusual that players like Carmelo Anthony and Dwight Howard will earn less money than Deng when they receive as salary the minimum contract as veterans: $ 2,692,991 million dollars. A risky gamble on LeBron James that turned out badly. (Bolavip)
The six highest paid players in the Los Angeles Lakers 2021-22
Player Salary in millions of dollars
1 Russell Westbrook $ 44,211,146
2 LeBron James $ 41,180,544
3 Anthony Davis $ 35,361,360
4 Talen Horton-Tucker $ 9,500,000
5 Kendrick Nunn $ 5,000,000
6 Luol Deng (retired) $ 5,000,000