Lakers News: How L.A. Could Benefit From Donovan Mitchell Deal
Utah Jazz shooting guard Donovan Mitchell's long-term fate with the franchise has seemed tenuous since team president Danny Ainge flipped three-time Defensive Player of the Year center Rudy Gobert to the Minnesota Timberwolves for a cadre of veterans, young players and, most importantly, three unprotected future first-round draft picks, a 2029 top-five protected first-rounder, and a 2026 first-round pick swap.
Now, it seems conceivable that Mitchell's future could be directly connected with the Lakers' offseason.
Marc Stein reports in his Sunday Substack column that Ainge apparently is intrigued by the possibility of adding L.A.'s two future first-round draft picks, for 2027 and 2029, to his growing asset portfolio. Stein writes that if Mitchell is acquired by the New York Knicks -- or potentially even another club contending for his services -- the Lakers' future selections and the expiring $47.1 million contract of embattled veteran L.A. point guard Russell Westbrook could prove to be valuable components in a possible three-team exchange.
Stein notes that the Lakers value those future picks highly, and would only be amenable to including them in such a deal if the returning players help the team reach contender status once again. That's a tall task for a team with very little shooting as of this writing.
Stein floats the possibility of Knicks shooting guard Evan Fournier and Jazz wing Bojan Bogdanović as being the returns in such a deal, and wonders whether they would elevate L.A. enough. From a basketball perspective, both those players would great help address the team's biggest weakness, even with the arrival of a solid volume long-range shooter in Patrick Beverley: outside shooting. Neither is even an average defender, so head coach Darvin Ham would need to mix and match his lineups creatively. L.A. has added a variety of athletic young players with some defensive ability, so those players could perhaps be staggered with the two defense-free veteran shooters.
Elsewhere on the Jazz, 6'4" wing Malik Beasley has plenty of upside as a two-way player, but his shooting fell back to earth last year following what might have been an anomalous 2020-21 half-season of career-best scoring with Minnesota.
The best potential deal rumored to be on the board for Los Angeles is a simpler two-team trade with the Indiana Pacers for big man Myles Turner, an excellent shooter and defender who doesn't need the ball in his hands to be effective, and wing Buddy Hield, a great shooter who is at least not a worse defender than Fournier or Bogdanović. The real question now, though, is if Indiana would accept a return of Westbrook's contract and the two future picks, or if the team thinks it can get better draft equity and/or young talent back elsewhere.
