Lakers: The Utah Jazz Trade Rob Pelinka Should Make Posthaste
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Danny Ainge has a winning problem.
Ainge, a longtime Boston Celtics fixture both on the floor as a player during the 1980s and in the front office from 2003-2021, is now stewarding a Utah Jazz rebuild as that team's prime decision maker. After the club flamed out in the first round of the 2021 playoffs, Ainge traded several well-compensated veterans on Utah's roster in a clear effort to help the team bottom out this year. All-Stars Donovan Mitchell and Rudy Gobert, plus role players Royce O'Neal, Bojan Bogdanovic and Patrick Beverley (a throw-in from the Gobert deal who never actually played a game in Utah), all found new homes through Ainge's dealmaking this offseason.
"Unfortunately" for Ainge, a lot of the pieces he received in return for his dealmaking, plus some leftover vets from the team's Gobert/Mitchell era, have congealed together incredibly well under new head coach Will Hardy (an ex-Celtics assistant coach, of course).
The Jazz are 3-0 right now, having beaten three straight playoff-bound clubs at that: the Denver Nuggets, Minnesota Timberwolves and New Orleans Pelicans.
Ex-Cavaliers Lauri Markkanen and Collin Sexton have enjoyed stellar starts to their Jazz careers. Jarred Vanderbilt, Malik Beasley, and rookie center Walker Kessler have all been better-than-expected after arriving to Utah from the Minnesota Timberwolves. Jazz guards Jordan Clarkson and Mike Conley, both big holdovers the club's playoff era, remain pretty darn effective. Center Kelly Olynyk, added in the Bogdanovic trade out of Detroit, has also been surprisingly solid.
So what's Danny Ainge to do? Should he let this over-performing Utah roster continue to succeed, even if it could hurt the team's chances of tanking for a shot at top 2023 draft prospects Victor Wembanyama and Scoot Henderson?
Of course not! I'm not saying the Jazz are going 82-0 or anything, but this incarnation of the team still seems much, much better than most folks expected heading into the season. With Markkanen performing at this level, they could easily be a play-in tournament-level type club (i.e. anywhere from a 7-10 seed in the West). If the team were to win its play-in tournament games and enter the NBA's actual playoffs, it would forfeit a lottery slot entirely. That can't be risked. Sooner or later, Ainge will need to start shipping out the rest of his good players to ensure that this team can bottom out effectively.
Your Los Angeles Lakers have already dealt with Ainge once since his fire sale began, taking back Beverley in a deal that sent Talen Horton-Tucker and Stanley Johnson to Utah. THT has barely left the bench in his brief time with the Jazz (he's averaging just 12.3 minutes a game), while Johnson was cut before the start of the regular season.
The Lakers as currently constructed are criminally, historically devoid of shooting (especially from long range) so far this season. They look decidedly worse than the Jazz, but since they don't actually own the rights to their draft pick this year (the New Orleans Pelicans can swap picks with L.A. in 2023), it does not actually behoove them to be this bad.
Kevin O'Connor of The Ringer reports that L.A. could be open to adding solid vets like Clarkson (drafted by the Lakers in 2014), Conley or even power forward Rudy Gay in a future deal. It's pretty darn wild that he doesn't even float the possibility of the Lakers doing their darnedest to trade for Markkanen, who is exactly the kind of player L.A. needs: a floor-spacing stretch four who, through these first three games at least, is playing with incredible tenacity and flashing the kind of All-Star versatility in his offensive game (he seems newly committed to aggressively driving inside) that convinced the Chicago Bulls to trade for his draft rights as the seventh pick in 2017 out of Arizona.
The seven-foot, 240-pound big man has flashed (seriously) some almost Kevin Durant-esque scoring versatility in this very tiny sample size with Utah. It's not fair to project that Markkanen will ever be an All-NBA talent per se, but an All-Star ceiling seems quite possible in the right situation.
The Lakers should not sell themselves short by requesting someone like Conley or Clarkson in trade talks with Ainge and co. if Markkanen can be had. Los Angeles possesses two future first-round draft picks that will most likely land near the top of the lottery in 2027 and 2029. For a rebuilding franchise, trading for those picks and Russell Westbrook's insane $47.1 million expiring contract would be a monumental haul.
Through three games, Markkanen is averaging a career-most 24 points on .481/.304/1.000 shooting splits. He is also averaging 9.7 points, 3.7 assists, and 1.3 steals per game, all career highs. Markkanen's 30.4% three-point mark (on 7.7 tries) should improve over time, as "The Finnisher" is a career 36.4% three-point shooter on a high-volume 6.1 looks a night, and has never converted less than 34.4% of his looks. Two of Utah's three games to this point have gone into overtime, so his counting stats may be a bit inflated even if one factors in a qualitative leap.
Markkanen is making a pretty reasonable $16.5 million this season and will be under contract through the 2024-25 season, so L.A. would also try to pry away other contracts from Utah in a hypothetical trade to match the outgoing Westbrook salary.
Beyond Markkanen, players like Clarkson (earning $13.3 million), Conley (making $22.7 million) or even Sexton (making $16.5 million) could also be thrown into a trade framework that could fit the needs of L.A. This writer thinks Malik Beasley, a 26-year-old an athletic shooting guard averaging 10.4 points a game on a .429/.385/.814 slash line over the course of his career, could also be an interesting fit.
A theoretical deal that sends Markkanen, Beasley and Clarkson to the Lakers in exchange for Westbrook and the two future first-round picks would work monetarily, and could represent the best haul possible, positionally, from this Jazz roster. When run through the ESPN trade machine, this transaction was graded as being able to improve L.A.'s win total by 21 games, while shaving 17 victories off the Jazz's projected total. For a team desperate to get into the "Tank-O-Rama For Wembanyama" sweepstakes (even though league commission Adam Silver is not a fan of such blatant rebuilding), that could be a pretty sweet exchange!
That said, Sexton and Clarkson have always been a ball hogs, which has inflated both their numbers. Someone who can play off the ball better (or is just more effective wit the ball in their hands) would be ideal, which is why Conley could make a bit more sense for L.A. as a supplemental playmaker. The big issue with a Conley deal, however, is that the Lakers already have plenty of non-All-Star point guards with or without Russell Westbrook. Patrick Beverley, Kendrick Nunn, and Dennis Schröder all work best at the point. Though Conley is no longer a good defender, he would be an instant upgrade on offense over any of these players, given his solid long range shooting and ball-handling.
Another wrinkle that could throw a wrench into a potential Sexton deal: after agreeing to a $72 million deal in a sign-and-trade with the Cavs, Sexton is not trade-eligible again until January 15, 2023. Rudy Gay would give the Lakers another stretch four option off the bench, as a career 35% shooter on 3.1 attempts. This season, he's making 45.5% of his 3.7 looks in 18.7 minutes as a Jazz reserve. He doesn't really offer much for L.A. on the other side of the ball, unfortunately.
A much younger new Jazz power forward, Jarred Vanderbilt, would be a better fit for L.A. Though he's not much of a shooter historically, the athletic 6'8" big man is a multi-tooled defender and solid around the rim. He would instantly be a much better player than any current Lakers frontcourt piece not named Anthony Davis or LeBron James. As far as the jump shooting goes, Vanderbilt is a career 20.8% three-point shooter on a microscopic 0.1 attempts, but in a sign of potential progress, he is nailing 66.7% of his triples on 1.0 looks a night in three games this season. Vanderbilt is currently on a $4.3 million contract this season and may be the kind of good-but-not-great young talent that Ainge would prefer to keep, however.
Los Angeles should pick up the phone and do its darnedest to get a deal done. This Jazz trade or a frequently-discussed exchange that could send Myles Turner and Buddy Hield to Los Angeles seem like the surest bets to upgrade the team's personnel. If Markkanen is actually this good now, he'd be the top asset either team could offer. Assuming, that is, that Danny Ainge would be willing to part with him.
