Caruso: I gave the Lakers multiple chances to keep me, offered to take paycut

[TreyKincade]

As a Laker fan, I am extremely happy for Caruso. I would have made the same financial decision even if I wanted to remain loyal to the team that developed me.

I am having more fun watching Bulls games than Laker games right now.

[Tracymcgoaty]

Money doesn't grow on trees, and I can understand choosing not sign him for financial reasons, what I'll never understand is preferring to spend the money on THT instead of him.

THT is a future project. Caruso is 7 years older. I love Caruso but im picking THT over him. Much better on offense and defense is going to improve over the years.

Thrilled seeing him thrive at Chi-town though. How can you not root for the pope!

[Up-And-Coming]

Caruso has been underrated up until this season. He seriously deserved All-NBA-Defense consideration the last couple of years and is a proven elite perimeter defender. I'd even go as far to say he's comparative to Marcus Smart. 2 years $15 mil was worth it imo but I'm not paying the Laker's luxury salary.

We prioritized THT and he was supposed to take some of Caruso's defensive responsibility so I will refrain from judging until Nunn and THT return to the court. Our scouting department really did a solid to invite Caruso up to our Summer League squad, G-League squad and eventually Lakers squad. He'll always be our fan favorite.

[jehosafats]

Caruso was hardly a net plus at the time LAL let him go. He was bungling plays in the open floor. Missing wide open shots. Even his defense wasn't exactly lockdown.

[BeatDaCavs420]

Caruso has been a turnover prone defensive liability in Chicago that is currently a net negative.

I think the Lakers projection for him are going to turn out to be accurate - that his new team was going to overpay him and his Chicago contract is going to be the biggest contract of his career. He may even end up back on the Lakers for the minimum after the Bulls.

In other words, the Lakers offer was fair and actually generous because AC is not really even worth 2 years $15 million. He's absolutely not worth what the Bulls are paying him which is close to $10 million per season.

The Lakers got the best value out of Caruso and Chicago will get the worst value out of Caruso.



Another reason why the Lakers win here is because Austin Reaves has replaced Caruso on an undrafted rookie salary and he's already better than Caruso.

Good luck with Westbrick

[BeatDaCavs420]

Lakers have some of the worst fans good lord

[Beethoven]

Caruso was hardly a net plus at the time LAL let him go. He was bungling plays in the open floor. Missing wide open shots. Even his defense wasn't exactly lockdown.

Correct. For making business decisions lot of times it is based on "what have you done for me lately" and in Lakers case I completely agree w their decision. He was great first two years but last season especially in the playoffs he was ineffective. Im glad he's moved on though and doing good in Chicago.

[John Murdoch]

He had a really good qoute on reddiks podcast paraphrasing but he essentially said

the reason he stood out in the Gleauge was because alot of dudes want to try and and come in to be CEO of the company..when in reality all teams are looking for at that point is someone to clean the bathrooms lol.

Watch on YouTube

[Edrees]

Money doesn't grow on trees, and I can understand choosing not sign him for financial reasons, what I'll never understand is preferring to spend the money on THT instead of him.

THT is a future project. Caruso is 7 years older. I love Caruso but im picking THT over him. Much better on offense and defense is going to improve over the years.

Thrilled seeing him thrive at Chi-town though. How can you not root for the pope!

The way I see it, if we didn't trade for Westbrook, we'd have Caruso, THT, KCP and Hield. This shouldn't be about THT Vs Caruso, but about Westbrook vs a bunch of players.

We basically sacrificed an extremely deep team to have westbrook

[Dr Aki]

This has been known since the day after free agency started.

Jeanie Buss said no to 3/27 (Caruso offered to take a 3 year deal instead of 4/37) and the additional 36 million dollar lux tax bill every year.

Not my money though. Busses aren't rich (relatively speaking) and since the Lakers are their primary business, COVID didn't exactly do their bottom line any favours (we all remember they got "shamed" into giving back 40 million in PPE loans right?)

Don't they have the most lucrative local TV deal?

Apparently not enough to make up for lost ticket sales and concessions for 18 months

[DroseReturnChi]

LeBron isn't as good GM as people make him to be.

he is a good gm. you dont pay 10mil to role players. championship teams only consist of max and vet mins.

[Marrrcuss]

This has been known since the day after free agency started.

LeGM said no to 3/27 (Caruso offered to take a 3 year deal instead of 4/37) and the additional 36 million dollar lux tax bill every year.

Not my money though. Busses aren't rich (relatively speaking) and since the Lakers are their primary business, COVID didn't exactly do their bottom line any favours (we all remember they got "shamed" into giving back 40 million in PPE loans right?)

fixed it for ya. I see you arent keeping up with all the latest narratives...

[DroseReturnChi]

I understand the Lakers not wanting to pay him. But why pay THT instead?

I don't understand why they think hes good.

if you dont think why tht will be good, your bad talent evaluator. just look at him. he screams star.
or are you questioning legms talent evaluation and claiming ur better? i would have done the same too what masai and legm did.

[FrobeBryant]

Talk about beating a dead horse..Caruso wanted more money. The Lakers, being a salary capped team, couldn’t match due to the tax implications. They opted to invest that money towards THT, a player with much more upside than Alex. Don’t get me wrong, Caruso was my favorite laker during his run here. But let’s not pretend like he was some sort of star or even a potential one. He thrived playing off LeBron and AD but was less effective when those guys weren’t on. And while we’re on this topic, I seem to remember RealGM’ers mocking laker fans for always hyping up Caruso and now all of a sudden he should’ve been an untouchable player?

[thebigbird]

I understand the Lakers not wanting to pay him. But why pay THT instead?

I don't understand why they think hes good.

if you dont think why tht will be good, your bad talent evaluator. just look at him. he screams star.
or are you questioning legms talent evaluation and claiming ur better? i would have done the same too what masai and legm did.

Nothing about THT screams ‘star’ lol. He hasn’t done s*** in the association.

[Marrrcuss]

As a laker fan, i did like Caruso but the over the top stuff is puzzling. That Brian Scalabrine treatment and him being your favorite laker as a backup? And even more weird, its picked back up with Austin Reaves.

Anything yall wanna tell me?

[Doctor MJ]

Not sure if already posted. If so please merge or delete. I actually feel for Caruso. I think he’s been a huge loss defensively. He’s been very appreciated in Chicago, so it worked out. Still sucks he didn’t feel wanted despite playing the way he did for the Lakers.

Read on Twitter

The GOAT will not be merciful.

Honestly I was shocked the way the Lakers treated Caruso as so disposable. To me when you build a guy up from nothing to being a valuable, culture-embodying role player on a team where non-superstars can feel unimportant, it really helps keep that positive tone going that allows the team to keep fighting hard at all time.

Not saying I'd have matched a max offer for Caruso, but I'd have wanted very much to keep Caruso, and I'd have specifically wanted to give him a raise over what he had before.

The fact that Caruso is now saying that the Lakers didn't seem to be interested at any price to me smacks of an organization that didn't understand what their actual assets were.

[Doctor MJ]

As a laker fan, i did like Caruso but the over the top stuff is puzzling. That Brian Scalabrine treatment and him being your favorite laker as a backup? And even more weird, its picked back up with Austin Reaves.

Anything yall wanna tell me?

So, last year the Lakers had the best defense in the league despite the fact that their two superstars - also generally considered their two best players - missed significant amount of time. How did they achieve this?

Well, Caruso was obviously part of it. He played hard on defense, led the team in steals per possession, and out of any big minute player on the team, the team's DRtg was lowest when he was on the court and highest without him.

To me if you're going to see him as disposable, you should be seeing other role players as your true cultural pieces...but if that was the case, who were those guys. Seems to me that basically the entire team other than the 2 superstars and rookies got sent away between last season and this, which means now the Lakers have to build back all that institutional knowledge from scratch with a bunch of players who understand to a certainty that however good they play, the Laker organization won't care about bringing them back.

When you send the message to your role players that their wisest course of action is to use their time on your team to audition to the rest of the league, bad things tend to happen and in my experience, this is often what precipitates the shift from remarkable resiliency to frustratingly fragile.

[DroseReturnChi]

austin reaves is the new caruso. name me a single gm who would take caruso over 5 times the price tag.

[The411]

austin reaves is the new caruso. name me a single gm who would take caruso over 5 times the price tag.

Why couldn't the Lakers have had both? Caruso was a good value at 4/37 and slightly better at 3/27. It's not like there are 15 unique players for each of the roster spots. There is going to be overlap in skill sets and Reaves would have benefited from Caruso.