Rumors Are Swirling That Dorian Finney-Smith Reportedly Left The Lakers Because He Found Out That Rob Pelinka Was Trying To Tank His Value Around The League
The dust has settled from Day 1 of NBA Free Agency, and you'll never believe this but for the most part, it did not live up to the "chaos" that we were promised. All of those "BIG" moves that Shams promised us yesterday? All we got was an MPJ for Cam Johnson trade. An impactful trade for sure, but that was it. And while free agency will last through the summer and there's always the potential for more, there's no denying that, given how last night was hyped up, what we got was a tad disappointing.
If you were someone who was looking for drama maybe in the form of free agent signings and not trades, there wasn't much of that either. Of all the Day 1 signings we saw, there were only a couple that made me say "holy shit"
1. Bruce Brown heading back to the Nuggets on the veteran's minimum
2. Dorian Finney-Smith bolting the Lakers for the Rockets.
As it turns out, the DFS move is where the "drama" might be from Day 1 of free agency. When he turned down his $15M player option, I think most expected that to be a formality so he could sign an extension to stay in LA. The team did give up 3 2nd round picks to bring him in, they had a positional need that DFS addressed, so it seems like that's where we were headed.
There was only one problem. Based on who you want to believe, this all happened because Rob Pelinka tried to tank his value around the league so DFS wouldn't have options
If true, this is pretty fucking wild. I'm sure there will be some out there who want to discredit this "reporting", but not me. I'm all in. When you put that information in the context of what we saw happen, it makes sense. When you look at DFS's 4/53M contract in HOU, he took a paycut ($11M, $12M, $13M, $14M) on a per year basis compared to what his player option was ($15M). Is it completely out of the realm of possibility that something like this happened and caused that reaction? He heard what Pelinka was doing, turned down his player option and said see you the fuck later I'm signing with the Rockets instead.
Let's also not try and act like Rob Pelinka is above something like this. It's not as if his history running the Lakers is spotless, he just benefits from being bailed out by the NBA. The same guy who is basically openly admitting that the Lakers are focused on punting the next TWO seasons so they can sign a max guy in 2027 (when no max players are even hitting free agency anymore)
“Though Finney-Smith was a popular locker room figure and helped the Lakers to a 14-6 record in the 20 games he started in the regular season, L.A. exercised discipline in its negotiations to preserve cap space for 2027, when the team expects to have space to sign a max-salary free agent.”
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which seems like a sad attempt at a spinzone to me. Another reason why I buy this story is because if you go back to the Luka trade, do we all remember how much "got out" when it came to Luka's conditioning, being fat etc? Is it a stretch to assume where that was coming from? The Mavs return most likely ended up being what it was becasue Pelinka probably convinced Nico that Luka was going to age horribly or some other type of bullshit, aka tanking his value.
All I know is something is going on in LA. You have key rotation pieces option out and bolting with rumors of shady behavior from the front office being a major reason why, you have LeBron deciding to opt into his player option instead of signing a 1+1 extension, Luka's signing of his extension is still TBD, and it's been widely reported he and DFS are great friends. Suddenly, there are more questions than answers in regards to the Lakers, and this is even after the NBA gifted them a generational talent.
I just can't understand giving up that package for DFS and then not being willing to do whatever it takes to keep him, so for him to bolt like that tells us that something had to happen. It's not like he went for $100M, all it was ended up being was the non-taxpayer midlevel. The Lakers could have done that, but it's clear something rubbed DFS the wrong way and here we are.
Was that thing Rob Pelinka trying to be shady and ruin his market with other teams? We'll probably never know for sure, but that sure does feel like what happened, only for it to blow up in his face.