Hypothetical Lakers Trades to Boost Pursuit of 2025 NBA Title
The Los Angeles Lakers are heating up at the right time and playing some of their best basketball of the entire 2023-24 NBA season of late.
Barring some miraculous, made-for-Hollywood type of storybook surge, though, this winning won't amount to winning a title. What's happened since the All-Star break is simply the Lakers leveling-up from mediocre to good, which is fun to watch but not exactly a step toward winning the franchise's first title since 2020.
If the Lakers hope to win at that level—and as long as LeBron James and Anthony Davis are on the roster, they absolutely should—then this roster might need some upgrading over the offseason. We're here to provide an early glimpse of what could be in the cards for this club by laying out three summer trade scenarios that could put it on a championship path.
One quick note before the hypothetical wheeling and dealing, though: Since payrolls and rosters will change with the summer's arrival, we'll focus on general trade concepts instead of trade machine-approved, salary-matching swaps.
Bringing in a Blazers' Backcourt Scorer
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When the Lakers are at their best, they're getting high-level offensive contributions from guards Austin Reaves and D'Angelo Russell. The problem for the Purple and Gold is those offensive eruptions don't come often enough.
With needs for steadier scoring and superior spacing, the Lakers could consider seeing what it would take to pry Anfernee Simons, a 21-plus-point scorer each of the past two seasons, away from the Portland Trail Blazers.
To be clear, he wouldn't come cheap. No team—not even one facing a rebuilding project as daunting as the one laying in front of the Damian Lillard-less Blazers—just gives away a 24-year-old with Simons' combination of shot-making (3.3 three-pointers per game on 38.8 percent shooting since the start of 2021-22) and explosive athleticism.
Still, the Lakers have stuff that could pique Portland's interest, namely future first-round picks and long-term prospects like Jalen Hood-Schifino, Max Christie and Maxwell Lewis. If L.A. cobbled a few together (say, a pair of future firsts and at least one of these young players), Portland might be willing to bite, particularly if it doesn't see Simons co-existing with Scoot Henderson and Shaedon Sharpe.
Finally Getting Kyrie Irving
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Wait, are we really still talking about Kyrie Irving reuniting with LeBron James in L.A.? Absolutely—and we're not the only ones.
The Athletic's Jovan Buha reported back in February that Irving was one of the Lakers' "potential targets" cited by team and league sources. It's an ambitious aim, sure, but if the Dallas Mavericks can't sustain their recent success and fall well short of their playoff ambitions, maybe they—or Irving himself—would consider a change.
An Irving deal might effectively exhaust what the Lakers have to offer. At the very least, they'd probably need to part with multiple first-round picks, several of their top prospects and likely at least one of Reaves or Russell, the latter of whom would need to either pick up his $18.7 million player option, per Spotrac, or iron out a new deal as part of a sign-and-trade.
Given the Mavs' win-now incentives—to keep Luka Dončić happy—it might take a three-team trade that sends the Lakers' future-focused package to a third team who delivers whatever plug-and-play talent Dallas needs to part with Irving. Negotiations could be complicated, but there's a universe in which Irving is (finally) in play for L.A.
A Trade for Trae
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With the Atlanta Hawks trudging toward another disappointing finish, expect to hear plenty of Trae Young trade talk this offseason. In fact, buzz is already building with one Eastern Conference executive telling The Ringer's Howard Beck that Young is "available" and a Western Conference executive opining Atlanta "would love to trade Trae."
If the Lakers hope to elevate their playmaking and perimeter shot-making, they'd be hard-pressed to find a better option than Young. The 25-year-old has his deficiencies—almost all of them revolving around the defensive end—but table-setting and bucket-getting aren't among them. He's on the cusp of authoring his second consecutive campaign with at least 26 points and 10 assists per game.
Young, another potential target cited by Buha, could find a new level of potency with his passing by lining up alongside James and Davis. Young's shooting efficiency could also surge by sharing the floor with two high-end scorers of their caliber.
The question here is Young's trade value, and frankly, that's hard to calculate. As productive as he is on offense, he's a total liability on defense, and outside of a surprise run to the 2021 Eastern Conference finals, the Hawks haven't won much with him. So, a deal for Young may not require as many assets as people think, though the Lakers would still likely be out at least two first-round picks, a prospect or two and perhaps some combination of Reaves, Russell and Rui Hachimura.
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