Lakers News: Breakout Role Player Ditches LA For Eastern Conference Contender

Former Los Angeles Lakers shooting guard Lonnie Walker IV, who enjoyed perhaps the best season of his career in LA as a critical energy-changing role player, is moving on.

Per Adrian Wojnarowski of ESPN, the 6'4" swingman is inking a one-year deal with the Brooklyn Nets. Terms of the agreement have yet to be disclosed.

Walker was thrust into a variety of roles during an up-and-down season with the Lakers. He inked a one-year, $6.5 million deal to join LA last summer, after having spent all four of his previous NBA seasons with the San Antonio Spurs.

The 6'4" swingman starting out the year as the team's starting small forward, as Darvin Ham opted to trot out an extremely undersized triumvirate of players on the perimeter: 6'3" Dennis Schroder at the point, 6'1" Patrick Beverley at shooting guard, and Walker at the three.

LA's unbalanced roster was a major point of concern for team president Rob Pelinka heading towards last February's trade deadline. He opted to make some transactions to correct that, flipping the contracts of over-the-hill guards Beverley, Russell Westbrook and Kendrick Nunn -- plus actually-good reserve center Thomas Bryant -- in exchange for Jarred Vanderbilt, Rui Hachimura, Malik Beasley, and Mo Bamba. The new additions helped spread the floor around stars LeBron James and Anthony Davis, and Vanderbilt especially upgraded the Lakers' defense.

In this new-look configuration, Walker was at first relegated to a bench role, before being removed from the team's rotation entirely. But after a few brilliant clutch scoring performances in select games against the Golden State Warriors during the second round of the playoffs, he had successfully clawed his way into Los Angeles' playoff rotation to close out the year.

All told, he averaged 11.7 points on .448/.365/.868 shooting splits, 1.9 boards, and 1.1 assists across 23.2 minutes a night in his 56 regular season games for LA.

Per Jovan Buha of The Athletic, Los Angeles had been open to re-signing Walker when he hit unrestricted free agency this summer. Apparently Walker preferred Brooklyn, where he might have a bigger role in the team's offense.

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