Why Lakers declined Jalen Hood-Schifino’s third-year team option

Earlier this week, league sources indicated that exercising Jalen Hood-Schifino’s third-year team option was nothing but a formality and that the Los Angeles Lakers would wait a year to make a decision on his fourth year.

Now, just a couple days later, the Lakers are in fact declining that third-year option, resulting in Hood-Schifino’s last year with Los Angeles.

The organization was quite split on this decision, resulting in this shocking decision being made.

Hood-Schifino has been a disappointing draft pick, but he’s dealt with a host of injuries. While the second-year guard obviously hasn’t done anything at the NBA level, his numbers in the G-League are solid.

The fact that he is also just 21 years old and has played only 21 games to this point adds intrigue to the front office’s decision. With such a small sample size, teams normally wait to see if a player can turn things around in this situation.

Ultimately, Hood-Schifino’s injury history did factor heavily into the decision to decline his third-year option, sources told ClutchPoints.

Los Angeles has included Hood-Schifino’s name in trade talks dating back to the middle of last season and again heavily throughout this past summer.

As would be expected with a rookie who has struggled as he has, teams didn’t view the former first-round pick as an asset on his own.

The initial inclination is that with a now-expiring contract, Hood-Schifino would be more intriguing for tax-saving purposes. But given how little money he would’ve been owed had they exercised this option, the difference is rather negligible. In fact, some league sources indicated teams often prefer to have that option in order to make a decision to decline or exercise it themselves.

Based on a clause in the CBA, the team that trades for Hood-Schifino would only be able to pay him a maximum of the $4 million option that was just declined.

So, even if he goes to a team and plays well, that team would be at a disadvantage in terms of re-signing him despite offering the opportunity to regain his NBA footing.

Factoring all of that into Hood-Schifino’s trade value, the only incentive a team would have in trading for him would be to lower their own tax bill for the 2025-26 season.

Had the Lakers exercised that third-year option, a team trading for him would have more belief that they could get something out of Hood-Schifino, which the Lakers did not.

Cutting bait on Hood-Schifino is also a stark contrast to the investment into development Rob Pelinka spoke of at his media day press conference.

Los Angeles also already waived Colin Castleton, who was also in the 2023 draft, to make room for Christian Koloko this season. The last remaining player from that draft class on the Lakers’ roster is Maxwell Lewis, who has not shown much either to this point.

This brings us to the central issue at hand here for Hood-Schifino: The Lakers have too many roster spots taken up by players who are years away from contributing to an NBA team, if they ever do.

Hood-Schifino, Lewis, and Bronny James are all on standard NBA contracts, and they likely won’t see the court this season unless Los Angeles is in dire injury straits. Of course, they could all see minutes during garbage time at the end of games.

Last offseason, the Lakers were hampered by player options they handed out the year prior. Declining this team option means the team won’t have that roster spot taken up by a player everyone in the organization might not believe fully in.

While declining this option obviously doesn’t open a roster spot immediately, it does signal to an altogether disastrous rookie class that Pelinka is willing to admit he and his scouting department made mistakes and will quickly move on from them.