Let’s make a deal, or not
Lakers face trade-deadline dilemmas. Who could be coming to L.A. and would it be worth making the move?
As the NBA trade deadline starts to creep up, the Lakers front office faces a complicated situation that’s constantly changing.
What — Seinfeld voice — is the deal?
There’s a bit of healthy impatience in certain corners of the Lakers’ locker room as the team moved past the halfway point of the season without making any notable roster moves.
Despite a recent five-game winning streak and Friday’s win against Memphis, the Lakers are 21-25 and, for now, on the fringe of the postseason race.
It’s led to some thumb-twiddling. In defense of the front office, the asking prices, leaguewide, have been viewed as unreasonably high — perhaps because of the haul Utah got for All-Star center Rudy Gobert in the offseason. And the list of teams viewed as sellers is dwarfed by potential buyers — with veteran-led teams like the Lakers, Clippers, Phoenix Suns and Golden State Warriors all more or less in the playin race and not the playoff race as January enters its final weeks.
All of this is to say that the options, at least as of today, either aren’t great or are expensive.
It’s why there’s healthy pessimism among a mixture of scouts, executives and agents that a significant deal can be brokered.
There continue to be signals that the Lakers won’t trade both of the first-round picks available to them — at this point, kind of a common sense revelation — unless some All-NBA-type player suddenly becomes available.
One deal that could be available would be for former lottery pick Cam Reddish, who has been out of the New York Knicks’ rotation for nearly two months. The Knicks initially hoped to recoup the first-round pick they sent to Atlanta in trading for him, but now league insiders believe a second-round pick and an expiring contract would get a deal done.
The Lakers have two contracts that would allow that trade to work — Lonnie Walker IV and Kendrick Nunn.
Walker, despite some inconsistency, is a better scorer and shooter than Reddish and just one year older. He’s rehabbing from knee
tendinitis and should be returning soon.
Nunn would be the more logical choice in a deal, but after missing all of last season and struggling through the first chunk of this one, he’s found his stride in January, averaging 11 points on 47.8% shooting and hitting 36.7% from three.
In the team’s heartbreaking losses to Dallas, Philadelphia and Sacramento last week, Nunn was a combined plus-32. Against Memphis, Nunn was plus-three as he scored 11 points.
Reddish has better size and fits a real need on the wing, but there’s not a consensus internally that he’d be an upgrade.
There’s also another reason not to make the deal, and for the Lakers, it might be the more powerful argument. If the Lakers trade Nunn for Reddish, they can’t trade Nunn in a package for someone who would be way more likely to make the Lakers more of a threat.
It’s the biggest issue the team is facing, the Lakers’ decision-makers wrestling with “If we do this, then we can’t do that later” thinking.
The team has signaled its preference to not take on another longterm contract. The Lakers project to have $30 million or so in salary-cap space this summer — not enough to fund a maximum contract but enough to put them in the conversation for some of the top potential free agents such as Kyrie Irving, James Harden and Draymond Green.
But the Lakers have come out of free agency empty-handed before. And league scouts and executives don’t view the free-agency pool as particularly deep, meaning teams
could look to do their spending now on the trade market.
It’s why some people still view Detroit’s Bojan Bogdanovic as the ideal target for the Lakers.
The cost is steep — sources in both conferences say the Pistons have been looking for a good firstround draft pick and a young player in a trade. But Bogdanovic is a deadeye three-point shooter and scorer at 6 feet 7. He’s averaging a careerbest 21.3 points and the Pistons clearly value him.
Though Bogdanovic is under contract for two more years and would cut significantly into the Lakers’ cap space, the team likely would have plenty of suitors should they need to deal him to clear room should one of the top superstars want to play for the Lakers and sign this summer.
It’s an option the Lakers would have with a player currently under contract and one that would be more complicated if the team dealt for a player on an expiring contract because of salary-cap holds and their impact on the Lakers’ ability to go over the cap to re-sign their own free agents.
Still, there will be competition for Bogdanovic — there isn’t a team in the league that’s not looking for a wing who hits 40% of his threes at a high volume. And the Lakers have been hesitant to make a move until they get clarity on Anthony Davis’ return from injury — and that should be coming this week.
The decisions are complicated, the potential ripples poised to affect the decisions to follow.
It’s why they’re moving so cautiously.