Lakers News: What Donovan Mitchell's Cleveland Trade Means For L.A.
Your Los Angeles Lakers may no longer be able to get involved in a trade package for All-Star shooting guard Donovan Mitchell, but the team could still poach other veterans from the Utah Jazz.
In recent days, a rumor had emerged that the Lakers could see themselves getting involved in a three-team Mitchell deal as a way to extract veteran assets from both Utah and whatever third team would land the three-time All-Star shooting guard. With that no longer in the cards, the Lakers will have one less option for offloading Russell Westbrook's contract this summer.
Earlier today, the Jazz decided to send Mitchell to the Cleveland Cavaliers for a boatload of future draft picks and pick swaps, forward Lauri Markkanen, guard Collin Sexton (in a sign-and-trade), and first-round lottery pick Ochai Agbaji.
The good news: though acquiring a batch of role players from, say, the Knicks in a three-team trade is probably off the board for now, the Jazz are clearly looking to sell off as many of their veterans as they can. Utah still has several players that could hold some appeal to L.A.'s front office.
In a new "emergency edition" of his podcast The Lowe Post, ESPN's Zach Lowe discusses the fall-out of the Mitchell deal to Cleveland with Worldwide Leader colleague Bobby Marks.
Lowe proposes an exchange of Westbrook and at least one future draft pick for Jazz veterans Mike Conley, Bojan Bogdanovic and Rudy Gay. The 34-year-old Conley, who has a non-guaranteed contract heading into the 2023-24 season, would theoretically duke it out with Patrick Beverley for starting point guard honors.
Bogdanovic, a 33-year-old tweener forward, started every health game he played with Utah last season. He posted averages of 18.1 PPG, 4.3 RPG, and 1.7 APG across 69 games started at power forward. Most crucially for L.A., Bogdanovic is a knockdown three-point shooter. Last year, he made 38.7% of a high-volume 6.8 long range looks a night. He can also shoot well from everywhere else, nailing 45.5% of his field goal attempts and 85.8% of his charity stripe takes.
At 36, Gay is well past his athletic prime, but could prove useful as a floor-spacing reserve stretch four behind Bogdanovic. He averaged 8.1 points on .414/.345/.785 shooting splits per game, and pulled down 4.4 rebounds, in 18.9 minutes.
The much-discussed deal with the Indiana Pacers for Myles Turner and Buddy Hield would unquestionably bring better players to Los Angeles than this hypothetical deal pitched by Lowe. The big question now is: would Indiana still be open to make the swap? If not, this could be a good backup deal.
Dan Woike of the Los Angeles Times writes that the Lakers will need to part with at least one first-round draft pick to get off the final, $47.1 million season of Westbrook's contract. Woike thinks that, with Mitchell off the board, the Lakers most likely will need to push for a deal with the Jazz for some combination of veterans (Malik Beasley and former Laker Jordan Clarkson are the other two players L.A. could consider) or the aforementioned Pacers trade. Woike pinpoints Bogdanovic as the most important Jazz piece to extract in any deal.
