The Lakers roster got deeper this offseason, but not every addition landed well. FanSided.com ranked Walker Kessler No. 1 and Quentin Grimes No. 6 on its list of the 10 worst contracts in free agency to this point, making the Los Angeles Lakers the only NBA team with two offseason additions on the list.
That is a sharp turn for a team that kept Austin Reaves alongside Luka Doncic and then added Kessler, Sandro Mamukelashvili and Grimes. The Lakers have been trying to supercharge the bench, and the moves around the edges looked built for that job: Rob Pelinka added wing defenders like Ziaire Williams and Matisse Thybulle on cheap one-year deals, while also bringing in players who were supposed to help balance a lineup heavy on offensive responsibility.
Kessler is the more surprising name because he was fresh off a season in which he played only five games, yet he is being treated as if his price tag is more than just a bounce-back bet. The number matters because he was said to be paid over $30 million per season, which is the kind of commitment that turns a depth addition into a front-office statement. Grimes drew a different kind of criticism. He was described as a bench player who took a step back as a shooter and was a non-factor in the playoffs, and his deal was placed at $15 million per season.
That salary line is where the math starts to bite. A contract worth $15 million per season is not minimum money or a short-term flyer; it is the sort of deal that expects production, especially from a player cast as a reserve. On a team that is trying to build around Doncic and Reaves, that makes every marginal move harder to separate from the broader plan. The Lakers can say they added depth. The list says they also added risk.
The tension for the Lakers is not whether they spent. It is whether those offseason resources were used efficiently enough to justify the roster they now have. They are being framed as a team with enough money to act like a contender, yet two of the players they brought in this summer were singled out among the league’s worst contracts. That leaves one immediate question hanging over the Lakers roster: if Kessler and Grimes were the kinds of deals the market punished, how much confidence should anyone have in the rest of the spending around them?
