Lakers: Could L.A. Look To Make More Minimal Roster Changes With Anthony Davis Hurt?
All-NBA Lakers center Anthony Davis has already missed a week's worth of games with a stress injury in his foot, but he will remain shelved indefinitely while the Lakers work to rehabilitate the foot and see how it responds to treatment.
In the meantime, your Los Angeles Lakers face a full schedule, with plenty of very losable games on their slate.
Eric Pincus of Bleacher Report writes that the club's front office may look to make more minimal adjustments to the team's personnel, rather than a major overhaul to improve the team, given that Davis is out indefinitely. He may be back in a month, he may miss the 2022-23 season. If L.A. determines the latter nightmare scenario to be the case, one wonders if the club will be willing to move any of its future draft picks at all.
Pincus suggests that the Lakers could look to specifically replace the absence of Davis in the team's frontcourt, perhaps by signing a free agent center still on the market, such as one-time Laker DeMarcus Cousins (he never played a game with the team after tearing his ACL ahead of the 2019-20 season). Pincus adds that the Lakers could still be amenable to flipping future second-round picks, as well as the $18.3 million in cumulative contracts being earned by washed-up point guards Patrick Beverley and Kendrick Nunn.
Pincus notes that, given that the rest of the league knows the Lakers will probably be buyers, and will be a bit desperate to boot, it may be difficult for the team to extract fair value in an exchange.
