Rui Hachimura is staying in Los Angeles. He is just switching sides.
Hachimura agreed to a two year, $28 million contract with the Los Angeles Clippers, according to ESPN’s Shams Charania. The 28 year old wing had spent parts of the last four seasons with the Lakers, but the two sides could not find common ground on a new deal.
According to Charania, Hachimura’s camp actually preferred to stay with the Lakers and explored a sign and trade to make that happen. The Lakers did not cooperate. Once it became clear Los Angeles was not moving with any urgency to keep him, he pivoted across the hallway at Crypto.com Arena and took the Clippers offer.
This one is a puzzle for the Lakers. Hachimura is exactly the kind of two way rotation piece a contender needs. He averaged 11.5 points per game last season and gave the roster real value at both power forward and small forward. He shot the ball well from three, guarded up when asked, and never made noise about his role. That is a keeper.
The Lakers appeared to prioritize financial flexibility over retention. That is fine as a strategy, but they have to actually turn that flexibility into something meaningful. Otherwise they just gave away a starter for the promise of something better later.
The Clippers, meanwhile, are patching a roster that just got radically reshaped. Kawhi Leonard is gone, traded to the Toronto Raptors in a deal that reset the franchise timeline. James Harden’s future is uncertain. The team needs bodies who can score, defend, and slot into different lineups. Hachimura checks all of those boxes.
Two years at $14 million per season is a fair number for a player of his skill level. He is not going to be an All Star. He is going to be a top eight rotation piece who plays big minutes for a team trying to stay competitive in the Western Conference.
The bigger question is what the Clippers roster looks like when everything settles. If Harden stays, they still have a top scoring guard and a proven big man in Ivica Zubac. Add Hachimura and Norman Powell, and you have a competitive team that will not be a title contender but will not be a bottom feeder either.
Hachimura himself deserves credit for how he handled this. He has bounced around a bit since Washington drafted him ninth overall in 2019, but he has never really complained. He has taken every role assigned to him and produced. That is why teams around the league keep calling.
His camp got a fair deal and he stays in Los Angeles, which mattered to him and his family. His new team gets a rotation player who can start on nights when they need him. Both sides walk away with something they wanted.
The Lakers, though, are the ones with explaining to do. Losing Hachimura for nothing when a sign and trade was possible is a strange front office decision. They better have a plan they can point to soon, or that decision is going to keep looking worse.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.
