Last updated: 9/30/2019
Last updated: 9/30/2019
Last updated: 9/30/2019
2025 Free Agents - Cam Reddish
A top prospect in the 2018 high school class, Reddish took a backseat to Zion Williamson and RJ Barrett at Duke, and ended up being drafted 10th overall in 2019. Reddish was inconsistent in his early years in Atlanta, while also missing a good chunk of games due to injury, and eventually fell out of favor and was traded to the Knicks in 2022. Reddish's minutes were inconsistent with the Knicks, and even received several DNP's before being traded to Portland at the 2023 trade deadline, where he was in the regular rotation, starting several games while Anfernee Simons missed time. Now with the Lakers, Reddish started the '23-'24 season having possibly the best stretch of his career, starting most of the Lakers' games. However, that changed as the season went on, and Reddish ended up falling out of the rotation and didn't play at all in the playoffs. Reddish has shown some ability to create for himself off the dribble, but hasn't done so efficiently. Efficiency isn't everything in that scenario, since sometimes it's just nice to have another creator to uplift bench units or just someone to go to who can get a decent shot off late in the shot clock, but Reddish hasn't even shown to be worth that kind of role. He has 52% true shooting thus far for his career, and is a 32% 3-point shooter. He struggles to finish at the rim, hitting only 58% of his attempts from there, according to Cleaning the Glass. He hasn't been effective from midrange either, hitting just 36% from there. Defensively, Reddish has good size for a wing at 6'8" with long arms, but hasn't consistently been a good defensive player. He misses too many rotations and has too many poor closeouts. He has had some really good moments as an on-ball defender for the Lakers, and overall seems to be improving on that end. Reddish has a good steal rate, so he can be a bit disruptive on that end at least. Reddish is still only 25 years old, so there's a chance that a team could foresee significant growth in his upcoming years, and he still has good physical tools and the reputation as a top prospect, which can sometimes stick with a player for several years. He has shown some flashes of being someone that can be a helpful player on a good team.
Summary
Reddish will be an unrestricted free agent with a $2.3 million cap hold and Early Bird rights. The Lakers could offer Reddish a starting salary of up to 5% more than the average salary (likely around $13.5 million) using the Early Bird exception, which should be more than enough should they wish to bring him back. Other teams will have multiple ways to sign Reddish as even teams without cap space could use any of the Non-Taxpayer MLE, Room MLE, Taxpayer MLE, or Bi-Annual Exception to sign him. It's also possible that he only gets minimum offers, and he may not even get fully-guaranteed offers.
Cap Considerations
Torrey Craig (1+1 year minimum, 2023), Dante Exum (2 years, $6 million, 2023), Kris Dunn (3-1 years, $16 million, 2024)