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Lakers Face Roster Challenges After Losing Kuminga
September has arrived, and the Los Angeles Lakers are still staring at the same problem: a roster with holes and almost no room to maneuver.
The latest reminder came when Jonathan Kuminga slipped through their fingers and into a two-year deal with the Minnesota Timberwolves. That miss didn’t just sting. It narrowed an already tight path.
As Khobi Price reported for the California Post, the numbers are brutal. The Lakers sit just $8.1 million below the NBA’s $209 million first-apron threshold and are hard-capped for the 2026-27 season. Sixteen players already hold guaranteed contracts. The cap is tight, the roster is crowded, and the options are thin with training camp only a month away.
Free agency offers scraps, not solutions. Trades would require assets the front office has more or less already spent. So the question in Los Angeles isn’t just who they can bring in. It’s who they’re willing to bet on from within.
Turning Inward
If the Lakers can’t find outside help, the pivot is obvious: internal development. That’s where Adou Thiero walks into the frame.
He’s 22, 6-foot-8, 220 pounds, and one of the very few young, athletic wings on this roster. Not a finished product. Not close. But he’s the kind of player you notice in warmups and in transition, the kind who makes a half-empty arena lean forward.
Price drew the direct comparison that’s now impossible to ignore. Kuminga stands 6-foot-7, 225 pounds. Thiero is nearly a mirror physically, both boasting high-end athleticism and unusual quickness for their size. The gap, for now, is skill and production. Kuminga is far ahead offensively.
Yet the failed pursuit of Kuminga changes Thiero’s reality.
“Without Kuminga though, there’s a pathway for Thiero to be on the fringes of the rotation,” Price wrote. The door that was meant for a proven young forward might instead open for a raw one.
This is how it often starts for players like Thiero. A roster crunch. A missed signing. A coach needing energy, length, and a body who can run with stars and clean up plays others create. Price even noted how players with Thiero’s profile tend to thrive next to high-usage offensive engines like Luka Doncic. The Lakers don’t have Doncic, but they do have ball-dominant creators who draw attention and leave space above the rim.
Thiero won’t be handed a starting job. He isn’t that player yet. What he does have is something this team badly lacks on the wing: bounce, activity, and a taste for the spectacular.
A Late-Season Glimpse
The intrigue around Thiero isn’t built on hype alone. It started to take shape at the end of last season.
His second year with the Lakers was choppy. Lower-body injuries sidelined him for stretches, and he spent most of the 2025-26 campaign in the G League. That’s usually the sign of a player buried in the depth chart, not one on the verge of meaningful minutes.
Then the playoffs arrived, and the script shifted. Price noted that Thiero finished the year earning consistent minutes in the postseason. That’s not nothing on a franchise that still measures itself by banners.
The real tease came in July.
In summer league action in San Francisco and Las Vegas, Thiero turned those playoff crumbs into something louder. He delivered the kind of plays that end up in highlight reels: lobs finished high above the rim, rebounds ripped down in traffic, defensive possessions where his size and mobility finally looked like a weapon instead of a project.
Price was clear-eyed about it. Thiero is “still pretty raw and has plenty of development ahead of him.” The polish isn’t there. The reads aren’t always clean. Yet the framework is.
And that framework lines up almost perfectly with what the Lakers wanted from Kuminga.
They were searching for a bigger wing who could be a lob threat, attack the glass, and stand his ground defensively against larger forwards. Those are the exact responsibilities Price outlined for Kuminga — and the exact areas where Thiero already shows signs he can contribute.
So the equation changes. Not because the Lakers landed their man, but because they didn’t.
A Risk the Lakers May Have to Take
This is where roster construction meets risk tolerance.
The Lakers need help on the wing. They’re boxed in by the cap. They’re short on picks and trade chips. The market isn’t offering much. That leaves them with an imperfect but compelling alternative: give Adou Thiero a real shot.
He won’t solve everything. He won’t replace the offensive package Kuminga would have brought. But he can run, jump, defend, and ignite a game with one play in the air. On a veteran-heavy roster that can sometimes look slow and methodical, that kind of electricity matters.
Training camp will reveal how serious this experiment becomes. Is Thiero just a “break glass in case of emergency” athlete at the end of the bench, or does he carve out a permanent place on the fringes of the rotation, just as Price suggested?
The Lakers wanted a ready-made answer in Kuminga. They didn’t get him.
Now they have to decide whether the next leap on this roster comes from a signing they couldn’t make — or from a 22-year-old already in their own gym, waiting for the game to speed up and finally match his legs.
