Brooklyn Nets named ‘potential bidder’ for Los Angeles Lakers star in free agency originally appeared on The Sporting News.
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The Los Angeles Lakers will have some competition when it comes to re-signing star guard Austin Reaves this summer.
Reaves has a $14 million player option for next season that he’s widely expected to turn down in favor of a new deal in free agency, and a potential new suitor has emerged.
Nets named ‘potential bidder’ for Austin Reaves
According to ESPN’s Tim Bontemps, the Brooklyn Nets are a team to watch as a “potential bidder” for Reaves over the offseason, due largely to the Nets’ ample cap space coupled with their need to add talent to the roster.
From Bontemps:
One potential bidder to watch this summer, sources said, is the Brooklyn Nets, who will enter the offseason with more than enough salary cap space to accommodate a max-type player.
Perhaps the Nets will make the Lakers sweat a little bit with their ability to offer Reaves a big contract, but it seems unlikely that he would leave L.A. for Brooklyn. It also seems unlikely that the Lakers would let that happen, as the organization seems determined to keep Reaves around.
“He started his journey here as a Laker and has made it very clear to us that he wants his journey to continue as a Laker,” Lakers general manager Rob Pelinka said of Reaves earlier this month. “And we feel the same way. We want his odyssey to continue to unfold in the purple and gold. … Both sides have made it abundantly clear that we want to work something out where he continues his prolific career here.”
Things could obviously change, but Nets fans probably shouldn’t get their hopes up about the possibility of landing Reaves in free agency.
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