Lakers Rumors: Is L.A. "Waiting For The Phone To Ring" When It Comes To Dealmaking?
Ramona Shelburne of ESPN spoke last week with Malika Andrews and ex-Laker Matt Barnes on NBA Today about the state of the Lakers and made some educated guesses regarding how the team's front office intends to operate.
"I think because they've gotten some wins -- and there's so much parity in the Western Conference -- they don't feel that sense of urgency [to trade]," Shelburne opined. "And frankly I don't know if they should at this point. They've played well when they've been healthy. And they've been a lot healthier, you've seen some growth in the last few games. Now granted, they were playing some bad teams, and teams that were not necessarily gonna be playoff teams."
It should be noted that Shelburne mentioned the team's health prior to Anthony Davis's flu-like, non-COVID-19 illness caused him to miss all but eight minutes of L.A.'s last two games (both losses) and LeBron James's sore left ankle forced him to sit out yesterday's 126-113 loss against the Toronto Raptors.
"My sense from talking to people around the league is they are not necessarily motivated right now to go do something big, unless something big presented itself to them," Shelburne continued. "They're waiting for their phone to ring, rather than to call [other teams]."
"The idea before was they needed to have another ball handler, they needed somebody else to create besides LeBron James," Shelburned offered. "That guy might be Dennis Schröder. He's been playing really well since he's come back, Russell Westbrook is established on that second unit."
Schröder is averaging 9.7 points while shooting 42.1% from the field and 92.9% from the charity stripe through 10 games, including seven starts. Recently, he was elevated to the starting shooting guard role next to current starting point guard Patrick Beverley. To accommodate the move, starting small forward Troy Brown Jr. was demoted to the bench.
The team is 8-4 across its last 12 contests, and with James and Davis likely to return over the weekend, could continue to compile a few wins in the days to come.
