The Los Angeles Lakers suffered a big blow on the opening day of free agency, as the Houston Rockets signed Dorian Finney-Smith to a four-year, $53 million deal. The Lakers had hoped to retain Finney-Smith, but team insider Jovan Buha reported that they tried to lowball him and that backfired.
“The DFS situation had nothing to do with [the apron],” Buha said. “What it had to do with was them lowballing him and trying to get cute with the offer, and him not being so happy with that, among other things that again, I don’t really want to dive into.”
Buha was then asked if Lakers general manager Rob Pelinka is the man to blame for Finney-Smith’s departure. He admitted that it was difficult to say, considering he had heard different things about the whole situation, but the only certain aspect was the lowballing part.
“The only thing I concretely have is the lowball part of it,” Buha stated. “So, from that perspective, I would say, yes, he screwed it up lowballing and I think that was a mistake.”
Finney-Smith’s unhappiness with the negotiations also meant he was unlikely to have any interest in helping the Lakers by agreeing to a sign-and-trade deal. The 32-year-old just walked out the door, and the team got nothing for him.
This has turned out to be bad asset management on Pelinka’s part. He knew Finney-Smith could hit free agency in 2025 by opting out of his $15.4 million player option, before acquiring the veteran from the Brooklyn Nets.
The Lakers gave up D’Angelo Russell, Maxwell Lewis, and three second-round picks for Finney-Smith in December 2024 and have now lost him for nothing less than a year later. They didn’t give up any premium assets as part of the package, but it’s still not ideal.
Finney-Smith’s departure is particularly going to hurt the Lakers defensively. They have managed to sign Jake LaRavia to a two-year deal, and while he’s no slouch on that end of the floor, he just isn’t as good as the departing veteran.
Finney-Smith, who averaged 7.9 points, 3.6 rebounds, 1.4 assists, 0.9 steals, and 0.3 blocks per game as a Laker, had also impressed when the Lakers played small-ball lineups. It will be interesting to see how effective those are in 2025-26 without him.
Getting back to Pelinka, it appears this wasn’t the only thing he did to anger Finney-Smith. Lakers insider Anthony Irwin reported that he was trying to tank the veteran’s value by talking to other teams about his ankle problems.
“The word out there is that Rob Pelinka was going out there and talking to teams about Dorian’s [ankle] to tank Dorian’s free agency value and the offers that could potentially come in on him,” Irwin said. “Word is that got back to Dorian and his camp,”
Finney-Smith played 63 games for the Nets and Lakers last season. Issues with his left ankle were what caused him to miss games, and he required offseason surgery to fix the problem. If Pelinka indeed tried to tank Finney-Smith’s value in this manner, he was never going to come back. That bridge would have been burned completely.
Buha was asked about this report as well and interestingly refused to comment on it. Make of that what you will.
