NBA Moneyball: What the Lakers Can Actually Afford

Look, the NBA salary cap isn't brain surgery, but it's got layers. Forget "soft cap" and "hard cap" for a second. Think of it as a speed limit on a highway. Most teams operate under a soft cap, meaning they can go over for their own players using specific exceptions. A hard cap? That's when you hit a concrete wall. You're stuck. Teams trigger a hard cap if they use the Non-Taxpayer Mid-Level Exception, the Bi-Annual Exception, or acquire a player via a sign-and-trade. Once you use one of those, your total payroll can't exceed the "apron" — a figure about $17.5 million above the luxury tax line.

For the 2025-26 season, the salary cap is projected at $141 million. The luxury tax line, where owners start paying dollar-for-dollar penalties to the league, is expected to be around $171 million. Then there's the dreaded "first apron" at roughly $178.5 million and the "second apron" at $189.5 million. Cross that second apron, and things get really punitive: you lose access to the Mid-Level Exception, your future first-round pick gets frozen in place, and you can't aggregate salaries in trades. It’s designed to stop superteams from hoarding talent endlessly.

Here's where the exceptions come in. These are like special passes to go over the cap. The Mid-Level Exception (MLE) is the most common. It allows teams to sign a player even if they're over the cap, up to a certain amount. There are different types: the Non-Taxpayer MLE, the Taxpayer MLE, and the Room MLE. The Non-Taxpayer MLE for 2025-26 is projected around $13.5 million. Teams using this exception get hard-capped. The Taxpayer MLE, for teams already paying the luxury tax, is smaller, around $5.2 million, and doesn't hard-cap you. If a team has cap space and uses it all up, they get a "Room MLE" around $8 million, often used to sign a solid role player. For instance, the Lakers used their Taxpayer MLE in 2023 to sign Gabe Vincent to a three-year, $33 million deal. That's a good example of a team adding a player who might have commanded more if they weren't in tax territory.

Then there's the Bi-Annual Exception (BAE), projected around $4.7 million for 2025-26. As the name suggests, you can only use it every *other* year. Like the Non-Taxpayer MLE, using the BAE also hard-caps your team. The Lakers last used it in 2020 to sign Wesley Matthews to a one-year, $3.6 million contract. They won't have access to it again until the 2026-27 season.

Real talk: the Lakers are always in the thick of this. For the 2025-26 season, let's say LeBron James opts into his $54 million player option (he probably will, because that's a lot of money). Anthony Davis is under contract for $49 million. Austin Reaves is at $14.9 million, and Rui Hachimura at $17 million. That's already $134.9 million for just four players. Add in Max Christie's $2.9 million team option, and they're at $137.8 million. They're already sniffing the $141 million cap *with just five players*.

Thing is, the Lakers almost always operate as an over-the-cap, luxury-tax-paying team. They're likely to be well over the tax line for 2025-26, meaning they'll be limited to the Taxpayer MLE, which for 2025-26 will be roughly $5.2 million. They won't have the Non-Taxpayer MLE or the BAE because those trigger a hard cap, and with LeBron and Davis on the books, they'll be way too high to stay under the apron. This means they're hunting for veteran minimum contracts or mid-level talent, like when they brought in Spencer Dinwiddie for the minimum this past season. A smart team will use their limited exceptions to get the best possible value, and frankly, the Lakers have been hit or miss on that front lately. They need to nail these smaller signings to contend.

My hot take? The Lakers would be better off letting LeBron walk in 2026 and completely resetting their cap if they want to build a true contender around Anthony Davis. Otherwise, they're just patching holes with a small MLE and veteran minimums, which rarely wins championships anymore. Expect them to be capped out and looking for value free agents.