The Lakers’ hiring of Tracy Murray as their full-time shooting coach isn’t the only news they announced on Thursday. They also informed us they have exercised Julius Randle’s 3rd year option on his contract.
While this is important news, it is also wholly expected. The recent high lottery picks — remember, Randle went 7th in his draft — to not have their 3rd year options exercised are Hasheem Thabeet and Anthony Bennett. Those two not only severely under-performed their draft status, the fact that they went number 2 and 1 overall in their respective drafts meant they carried very high costs in comparison to other rookies in their class*.