Los Angeles Lakers
Seeing as they extended a qualifying offer to him, it seems like the Los Angeles Lakers do have interest in keeping their young guard. Now, by extending him this offer, the Lakers can not only match any offer sheet he signs in free agency, but they control the rights to him and can even work out a sign-and-trade deal that will work in their favor.
Los Angeles is a championship contending team with LeBron and AD, but they are very high on the idea of adding a third All-Star talent to pair with these two guys. Financially, it will be hard to make this work, but in a perfect world, adding a third superstar-like talent is a possibility for the Lakers this offseason if they can leverage their free agent assets like Dennis Schroder and Talen Horton-Tucker.
Being able to possibly sign-and-trade Horton-Tucker could prove very useful to the Lakers, but at the end of the day, re-signing him to a two-year deal could be just as important. THT has a lot of upside as a player and he has proven this time and time again when given the opportunity to play.
Talen Horton-Tucker is not a superstar talent and maybe does not possess the potential to be this kind of player, but there is no reason why he cannot be a key contributor for the Lakers off-the-bench for many years to come. His teammates seem to enjoy having him around and when he has been on the court, Horton-Tucker has been a key contributor for Los Angeles.
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They definitely cannot afford to bring him back on a max contract or even close to this kind of contract, but using their MLE to sign the young shooting guard is definitely an option. If Talen Horton-Tucker wants to remain in L.A. he may have to be willing to accept less money than he could get from other teams.
In doing so though, he would continue to be on a championship contending team and could potentially work himself into a bigger role with the Lakers given that Schroder, Kuzma and Caruso could all be on the move this offseason.
