Rui Hachimura, Lakers Reportedly Agree to 3-Year, $51M Contract After Midseason Trade

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Rui Hachimura will remain in purple and gold after agreeing to a three-year, $51 million deal with the Los Angeles Lakers, according to Shams Charania of The Athletic and Stadium.

The Lakers extended Hachimura the $7.7 million qualifying offer for the 2023-24 NBA season, which made him a restricted free agent this offseason. Once that happened, the odds of him staying on the West Coast looked strong.

Los Angeles retained the ability to match any offer sheet he signed with another team, and Hachimura’s market wasn’t so robust where one could picture a major bidding war emerging. Bleacher Report’s Eric Pincus reported on June 19 that rival NBA executives were projecting the 25-year-old to be worth $12-18 million annually.

Restricted free agents can also see their value depressed somewhat when teams around the league sense any attempt to sign a player will be futile. Sports Illustrated’s Chris Mannix reported the Lakers “have been signaling that they intend to match any offer for restricted free agents Austin Reaves and [Hachimura].”

Following his midseason trade from the Washington Wizards, Hachimura didn’t go above and beyond but showed he could be a positive contributor in Los Angeles’ rotation.

During the regular season, the 6’8″ forward averaged 9.6 points and 4.7 rebounds in 33 appearances with the team. The playoffs are where he really shined as he put up 12.2 points per game and shot 48.7 percent from beyond the arc.

The Lakers will hope the postseason is more representative of Hachimura’s ceiling moving forward.

Per NBA.com, he had a 74.4 percent effective field-goal rate in catch-and-shoot situations during the playoffs compared to a 48.3 percent effective field-goal rate in the regular season. Perhaps he can find a middle ground between the two in 2023-24.

In general, this wasn’t shaping up to be a transformative offseason for L.A.

General manager Rob Pelinka used the phrase “pre-agency” to describe the team’s flurry of trade deadline deals when they happened, which implied two things. The Lakers were aiming to keep most or all of the players they acquired, and those trades would effectively count toward their 2023 free-agency business.

Little had changed by the time the offseason arrived. Pelinka told reporters that team officials “believe in the proof of concept of this group.”

“We want to try our hardest to keep this core of guys together and also improve around the edges and on the margins to not only get back to where we were last year but hopefully take the next step and get into the NBA Finals,” he said.

Continuity isn’t a luxury Los Angeles has enjoyed much as the front office has cycled through a number of complementary pieces to support LeBron James and Anthony Davis. And James is no longer so good to where his team can overcome any lack of on-court chemistry.

Re-signing Hachimura goes a little way toward maintaining the kind of cohesion that’s required of any title contender.