Lakers News: L.A. Almost Traded Russell Westbrook -- Again -- Last Week
It looks there was indeed a reason that your Los Angeles Lakers' Media Day was postponed nearly a week.
Shams Charania, Sam Amick, Jovan Buha of The Athletic report that your Los Angeles Lakers were engaged in a "blockbuster trade" to send Russell Westbrook and their two unprotected future first-round picks in 2027 and 2029 to the Indiana Pacers in exchange for Myles Turner and Buddy Hield, which is the best remaining potential trade package rumored to be available to the team (at least, at present).
The Athletic reporters write that team president Rob Pelinka, governor Jeanie Buss, and her advisor Kurt Rambis met several times prior to the start of training camp last week to consider a deal. Jerry Buss's two youngest sons, Joey and Jesse Buss, along with new head coach Darvin Ham, were heavily consulted. This potential trade is given as the reason L.A. delayed the start of Media Day for a week.
Earlier in the summer, L.A. also discussed a deal that would just send one first-round pick and Westbrook to the Pacers in exchange for Turner. A deal that included a first-round pick and "second-round compensation" (which sounds like potentially multiple second-round picks based on the wording) for Turner and Hield was also considered. That sounds ideal.
Apparently, as the summer wore on, Indiana owner Herb Simon grew more intrigued at the idea of retaining Turner and Hield to compliment young new star Tyrese Haliburton. It's fascinating, as the Pacers also offloaded probably their third-best player, Malcolm Brogdon, to the Boston Celtics for spare parts and more importantly future draft equity. The team seems to be sort of half-committed to a rebuld, but not talented enough to actually contend for anything, either. It should flip Turner and Hield.
The report goes on to mention that L.A. also considered trying to trade for Jordan Clarkson, but apparently team owner Ryan Smith is too enamored with the 2021 Sixth Man of the Year and wants to keep him stuck on a rebuilding team for some reason.
Why do we know about this now? And why didn't a deal get done then?
The Athletic report seems to suggest that the younger Buss brothers (who have emerged as big players in both the family's Hulu "Legacy" documentary and, apparently, in personnel moves) may not have felt comfortable making the move. It is insane that they get veto power over such a transaction, and that Lakers management has devolved into this multi-headed snake.
You can't make these determinations by committee. Rob Pelinka seems to be getting his power diluted by all these other voices: a voting body comprising three Busses and one or two Rambises (though Linda Rambis wasn't mentioned in this report specifically, she is also an advisor to Jeanie Buss), one Ham, and one Pelinka sure makes things seem a bit overstuffed. Yes, people can weigh in, but at the end of the day, the main basketball mind, Pelinka, deserves to be empowered enough to pull the trigger on a deal. If L.A. needs to reach "consensus" on a trade every single time, it's going to be miraculous if anything gets done this year.
What is L.A. waiting for? Improve the team today, and then make other moves when this summer's free agent signings (here's looking at you, Lonnie Walker IV, and future pick swaps) become trade-eligible.
Yes, Myles Turner and Buddy Hield are not All-Stars. But they are very, very good at very particular on-court skills that would greatly benefit L.A. right now. The Lakers don't need to surround LeBron James and Anthony Davis with another All-Star. They need to surround them with the kind of depth that can maximize their All-NBA skillsets, in this case, floor spacers and defenders. We saw that help L.A. win a championship in 2020. A "Big Three" approach makes little sense at present, unless that third piece is, say, Kawhi Leonard (terrific at two things, defense and shooting, that are not James's or Davis's strengths at this stage), whom L.A. did try to sign in 2019.
This is a very strange approach to team management.
Charania, like Adrian Wojnarowski and Chris Haynes, has impeccable sources when it comes to breaking this kind of news. Amick and Buha are no slouches in this department either.
All this is to say, someone has been feeding them this information about all of these Lakers "near-trades." And this report is just the newest instance in a pattern that has been repeating all summer.
Because nothing functionally has happened (i.e. there is, as of this writing, no Westbrook trade) we have to assess why we're being fed all this info, over and over again, with new packaging.
The Lakers were "close" to pulling the trigger on a Bojan Bogdanovic deal with the Utah Jazz, before he was shipped out to the Detroit Pistons for zero draft picks in what honestly feels like a Danny Ainge spite deal. They've been "close" to trading for Myles Turner and Buddy Hield. They've been sniffing around Kyrie Irving -- who's even less reliable than LeBron James and Anthony Davis in terms of on-court availability -- all summer and are clearly considering him in free agency next year.
What does all this ultimately idle chatter remind you of, Lakers fans? To this writer, it reeks of all the various reports being leaked throughout the 2021-22 season that now-ex-Lakers head coach Frank Vogel was about to get fired. Why was that information being so exhaustively and frequently leaked throughout the season? It served only to undermine whatever he was trying to impress upon his players, and wound up mutating into a self-fulfilling prophecy (though really, could anybody have won with that old and injury-prone roster?).
The same is true now. Who in Lakerland feels so compelled to report, over and over again, that L.A. wants to trade Russell Westbrook, yet refuses to do so unless it's for a very specific package?
Especially with the Lakers set to open up their preseason this season, this will only hurt team chemistry. Russell Westbrook doesn't exactly want to be in Los Angeles. Los Angeles doesn't exactly want Russell Westbrook to be in Los Angeles. Every single player and fan is pretty acutely aware of the team's dirty laundry now. It is an ineffective way of doing business. You can't pretend to present a unified front if you're truly anything but.
The Lakers need to stop spending so much time keeping the press in the loop about all their scuttled or potential deals and more time getting these deals done. Should no Westbrook deal get done before, say, the trade deadline, the team chemistry is on track to sink under the weight of all these rumors.
