“There are two big differences between LeBron and Austin right now. One, LeBron is a short-term solution. Austin is viewed by the franchise as a long-term cornerstone,” said Buha.
“So, if it comes down to would you rather pay Austin $40 million for the next five years or LeBron 40 million for one year, they’re going to prioritize the long-term contract here. So, that’s like Austin is more of a priority for the Lakers than LeBron is. That’s just a fact. So, that’s one part of it.
“The second part of it is that Austin is going to have a market, and LeBron, maybe he wants to go to Chicago or Brooklyn. I do not foresee that. But the issue with LeBron is that all of the teams that are going to want LeBron are going to have somewhere between a vet minimum offer and a non-taxpayer MLE offer. So LeBron can’t leverage the market against the Lakers the same way Austin can.
“Austin can go get a monster contract offer from Chicago or a monster contract offer from Brooklyn and put pressure on the Lakers to be like, ‘They’re about to pay me $40 million annually. You need, you know, maybe I’ll take a haircut off of that, but you need to give me that fifth year, and it needs to be pretty close to 40 million.’ LeBron is not gonna have the same leverage.
“Like, so on some level, like I think it’s really a leverage thing where Austin has leverage in terms of being a long-term piece for the franchise, where LeBron is at most a two-year piece, not, you know, one to two-year piece. And then Austin could actually go out and get a max offer from people that LeBron is just not gonna go get because he doesn’t want to go play in Brooklyn or Chicago, and he doesn’t really fit their timeline either.
“So that’s where I think that the key thing is, like it’s not about who’s better or who is better for next season. It’s about the longer term; the Lakers want to retain Austin and retain that asset, and then Austin also is going to have some more competition on the market than LeBron is.
“LeBron can’t say, “Oh, the Cavs are going to pay me $40 million. You have to pay me $40 million.” That’s just not possible. So, that’s where I think, from a leverage perspective, Austin has more leverage in this situation. And Austin, I think, is going to get a bigger contract with the Lakers because of that, or partly because of that.”
