The Los Angeles Lakers made two cuts on Tuesday to get their roster down to 17 players by waiving Robert Upshaw and Michael Frazier. Both of those players are candidates to join the Lakers D-League team but now the Lakers have a couple more decisions to make to get the roster down to 15. With less than a week to go before the NBA season officially starts it seems like the Lakers have already made their toughest decisions and Broderick Turner of the Los Angeles Times expects Metta World Peace to make the team.
The Lakers came into training camp with 12 players on guaranteed contracts so the competition was expected to be extremely high. It has been, but Turner believes that the Lakers have already made their biggest decision by keeping Robert Sacre over Upshaw as he thinks Jabari Brown and Jonathan Holmes are near locks to be cut. If Holmes and Brown do get cut as expected that means that World Peace will make his way onto the roster despite a non-guaranteed contract.
The expectation is that the final roster spot will come down to World Peace and Brown with World Peace having the edge due to his experience and the fact that the Lakers are reportedly impressed with how hard he has worked to make his way back to the NBA. Holmes may throw a bit of a crimp in this plan though because he dislocated his shoulder earlier this week and although the Lakers only guaranteed him $100,000, they will be on the hook for the rest of his non-guaranteed money too until he is recovered. It is unlikely that the Lakers will keep Holmes just because they are on the hook for the money they owe him but it is still a possibility.
Brown was an undrafted free agent coming out of Missouri in 2014 and played for the Lakers D-League team until he got called up to the NBA in March where he played 19 games for L.A. Brown has struggled this preseason which has made his chances of making the roster a bit slimmer while World Peace has shown enough to take that final spot.
World Peace, on the other hand, hasn't played in the NBA since 2013 when he played 29 games with the New York Knicks before being cut. If he makes the team World Peace will likely not be able to provide much for the Lakers but he does give them a true small forward, which is something they currently lack, experience and toughness.
