Will Lakers Agree To Rumored Trade Price For 2020 Champ?

With less than a day until the 2023-24 season's trade deadline, will your Los Angeles Lakers make a major move?

All kinds of players, from All-Stars to fringe role players, have been floated as potential LA targets, with particular smoke surrounding Atlanta Hawks combo guard Dejounte Murray, a talented one-time All-Star and All-Defensive Teamer who's on an exceptionally good expiring contract.

LA has also been linked, perhaps unsurprisingly, to a few former Lakers this deadline season. Two are current Chicago Bulls. Between center Andre Drummond and guard Alex Caruso, the 2020 champ seems like the more important piece who could help plug the Lakers' porous perimeter defense, which falls off a cliff whenever Jarred Vanderbilt gets hurt.

In a new conversation, The Athletic's Jovan Buha and Darnell Mayberry unpacked the fits of several Bulls vets who might be on the move. Mayberry, the site's Chicago insider, cautioned that Bulls front office "masterminds" Arturas Karnisovas and Marc Eversley have to this point seemingly given outsized import to their own incumbent players, which hampers how effectively they can make deals. Mayberry believes that Chicago will finally begin to break up its "core" that peaked with a quick first round playoff exit two seasons ago.

When asked about how easy it would be to pry Caruso away from Chicago, Mayberry was fairly pessimistic.

Mayberry noted that Bulls management believes Caruso, an All-Defensive Teamer last season who's only gotten better on offense this year (he's nailing 40.4% of his career-most 4.4 triple tries a night), is an important "win-now" element of their team, despite the facts that (a) the 6'5" pro gets hurt frequently due to his physical coverage style, having missed 63 games during his two-and-a-half seasons with the team, and (b) Chicago is the ninth seed in the East, and probably not even capable of winning enough play-in games to make the actual playoffs.

Buha and Mayberry note that Chicago is reportedly requesting more than one first round draft pick in exchange for Caruso's services. He's on an absolute steal of a deal (he's making $9.5 million this year and has a partially-guaranteed $9.9 million for 2024-25), and LA has missed his defense since foolishly letting him walk in favor of retaining "win-later" shooting guard Talen Horton-Tucker during LA's infamously ill-fated 2021 offseason.

The NBA's glamor franchise seems destined to make some level of move, and Alex Caruso would be a logical fit. Although Los Angeles doesn't have more than one future first draft pick available to offload in a deadline deal, it could theoretically offer up some future pick swaps. Would that sate Chicago? We'll find out soon enough.