D’Angelo Russell makes $18.7 million contract decision amid uncertain Lakers future

D’Angelo Russell finally made his decision on whether or not he’ll be opting into his $18.7 million contract with the Lakers for next season.

On Friday night, the Los Angeles Lakers finally received closure on one of the clouds hanging above their heads as they enter the start of free agency. D’Angelo Russell, who has an $18.7 million player option for next season, decided to opt into his contract and stay with the Purple and Gold, according to Shams Charania of The Athletic.

Some believed that Russell could have made as much as $100 million across three years — nearly $15 million more per year than what he will be making next season now that he has decided to opt into his contract with the Lakers. Thus, his decision to accept his player option is a major win for the Lakers.

At this point, D’Angelo Russell is a known commodity; he can get hot in a hurry on offense and he can run pick-and-rolls dangerously due to his pull-up threat from the perimeter, but he is also a noted sieve on the defensive end. Russell, however, can space the floor well, both in an on-ball and off-ball role. He finished the 2023-24 season with averages of 18.0 points, 3.1 rebounds, and 6.3 assists per game, making three three-pointers a night on 7.2 attempts per.

Will the Lakers trade D’Angelo Russell… again?

Last season, D’Angelo Russell was the subject of trade rumors aplenty after the Lakers fell off following their triumph in the inaugural NBA In-Season Tournament. Russell’s contract worth $17.3 million last year was an easy piece to add in prospective trades, and for a second, it seemed as though the Lakers were going to use him as trade bait, again, not even a year after re-acquiring him.

However, Russell caught fire to begin the 2024 calendar year, and he seemed to play his way out of trade talks. The Lakers, in the end, decided to stay the course, running back the roster that made the 2023 Western Conference Finals (with the addition of Gabe Vincent). Alas, two years in a row, the Lakers saw their championship dreams get dashed by the Denver Nuggets, and in heartbreaking fashion as well as they relinquished one double-digit lead after another.

D’Angelo Russell, at the very least, put up a much better effort for the Lakers in this year’s playoffs than he did during the Nuggets’ sweep of them in 2023. But with time always ticking on the Lakers in terms of competing for a championship, Russell will inevitably find himself in trade talks yet again as the Purple and Gold desperately search for the player that will get them over the championship hump.

It’s unclear, however, who the Lakers could go for in a potential trade. Will the Atlanta Hawks finally get around to trading Trae Young now that they have let go of Dejounte Murray? Will adding Zach LaVine from the Chicago Bulls be enough, and will it be worth it, especially when LaVine is going to make around $136 million over the next three years? Can they pull off a trade for Lauri Markkanen?

Perhaps the Lakers will be content to make smaller-scale trades that could help them around the edges. Trading for Cam Johnson could give them a sharpshooter with size; Dorian Finney-Smith would give them more toughness on the wing.

Whatever the case may be, D’Angelo Russell made the Lakers’ life on the trade market that much easier by opting into his contract for the 2024-25 season worth $18.7 million.