Lakers News: 2022-23 Lakers Born To Lose?
ESPN's Brian Windhorst has put a significant damper on the upcoming 2022-23 season outlook for your Los Angeles Lakers.
During a recent appearance on the worldwide leader's NBA Today, Windhorst suggested that the Lakers' front office, led by team president Rob Pelinka, does expect its current roster to succeed this year.
That reality is patently obvious to anyone paying attention to the club's bizarre personnel decisions this summer. Los Angeles has put special emphasis on signing young athletic role players like Lonnie Walker IV, Juan Toscano-Anderson, Damian Jones and Thomas Bryant, regardless of shooting acumen. The team has also opted to load up on non-All-Star point guards (Patrick Beverley and Dennis Schröder are joining Russell Westbrook and Kendrick Nunn -- all four traditionally play big minutes at the point), adding so many that it is reportedly considering shifting some up a position to shooting guard so everyone can eat, minutes-wise.
Last year, the Lakers infamously went all-in on Westbrook by offloading three valuable forwards (starter Kentavious Caldwell-Pope and big-minute reserves Kyle Kuzma and Montrezl Harrell) plus their 2021 first-round draft pick to the Washington Wizards. The move proved somewhat disastrous. Though Westbrook was mostly healthy, he had lost just enough athleticism to no longer be effective as the team's secondary playmaker and late-game finisher. Long-lasting injuries to star forwards Anthony Davis and LeBron James on a paper-thin roster also didn't help. Los Angeles finished with a 33-49 record, missing the playoffs just two years after winning it all.
So does this latest intel from Windhorst mean the Lakers are really open to just keeping Westbrook throughout the season? At the very least, one would hope they'd look to move him to another team by the trade deadline, adding back players that make more positional sense for James and Davis
A lot of what ails the Lakers can be cured through one move: trading the egregiously $47.1 million expiring contract of 2021-22 starting point guard Russell Westbrook to another team in exchange for more shooting at the wing and/or forward spots. The best proposed hypothetical deal that could still be on the table would be a move that sends Westbrook and some level of future draft equity to the Indiana Pacers, with center/power forward Myles Turner (a great defender and good three-point shooter) and three-point specialist shooting guard Buddy Hield rerouted to Los Angeles.
Another, seemingly more tenable deal would ship Brodie out to the Utah Jazz in exchange for ace three-point shooting power forward Bojan Bogdanovic and any number of other veteran pieces. Options include wing Malik Beasley, power forward Rudy Gay, and guards Jordan Clarkson and Mike Conley. 25-year-old power forward Jarred Vanderbilt, a new arrival in Utah from a trade with the Minnesota Timberwolves earlier this summer, is young with enough upside that the Jazz may want to keep him around long-term, but if he can extracted in a trade, that's worth exploring too. Turner is better as a two-way player than any of these returning Jazz pieces, and the fit of Hield as a floor spacer could be perfect for the shooting-deprived Lakers.
It would behoove the Lakers to be open to sacrificing future flexibility in the interest of maximizing the present ceiling of a roster with James, who while perhaps no longer quite at the peak of his powers remains one of the 10-12 best players in the league, when healthy.
