Lakers News: L.A.'s Trade Cupboard Is Pretty Bare
Your Los Angeles Lakers are 3-10 and fading fast.
Time to throw in the towel and join the Tank-O-Rama For Wembanyama, you say?
Unfortunately, L.A. lacks the rights to their own draft pick this year, as the New Orleans Pelicans can swap picks with the Lakers should their record be worse than the Pelicans' (which it almost certainly will be).
The Lakers actually don't have a ton of positive trade chips at all, relative to the rest of the NBA. HoopsHype just released a fascinating look at what its writers believe are the best and worst trade assets across the league.
Because of just how terrible Los Angeles has looked to this point in their season, HoopsHype makes an interesting pitch:
"Outside of LeBron James and Anthony Davis, the Lakers generally lack tradeable assets. They hold six of their next seven first-round picks, but can only move their 2027 and 2029 first-rounders due to Stepien rule complications [teams cannot trade consecutive draft picks]. With the way the Lakers season is currently going, it’s no longer controversial to say that they may need to consider eventually trading their All-Stars to fortify their asset chest and look towards the future."
This is fair. Only James and Davis qualify for HoopsHype's Trade Value Rankings Top 100 list (we'll talk about this more in a later post), and even then, neither All-Star cracks the top 20. As you'll probably remember, James can't even be traded until the offseason now, thanks to the now-highly-questionable contract extension he signed this past summer.
HoopsHype cites rookie wing Max Christie and second-year guard Austin Reaves as the Lakers' most intriguing players younger than age 25, which sounds about right.
Most of the Lakers' other players earning more than a veteran's minimum would need to be attached to some kind of future draft equity, should the team want to move on from them. Lonnie Walker IV, signed to a $6.5 million mid-level exception, has been the lone standout inked to a deal above the minimum that the Lakers could potentially flip in the hopes of acquiring a draft pick. What could he fetch? His standout numbers are in part the product of necessity, as he scores so much for a bad team that is absolutely desperate for his offense. Would another team be willing to send L.A., say, a lottery-protected first-round selection for Walker's services this season? A high second-rounder at least seems tenable.
