Lakers Trade: How Did Mitch Kupchak Pull off Ramon Sessions Deal?

The Los Angeles Lakers acquired talented point guard Ramon Sessions from the Cleveland Cavaliers for a first round pick, Luke Walton and Jason Kapono, according to Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo! Sports. It is a great trade for the Lakers, but how did General Manager Mitch Kupchak pull the deal off?

It was a very good one for the Lakers, who desperately needed help at the starting point guard position. Sessions now can step into that role and fill it nicely.

He isn’t an All-Star by any means, but Sessions is a smart guy who knows how to play his position. That really is all the Lakers need.

Basically, the Lakers just pulled off another one of those trades they always seem to do, where they keep all their solid parts and still get a nice player to improve their team.

The way Kupchak pulled off this deal is really beautiful. He could not have done a better job of getting what his team needed while keeping what has made it so good over the years.

The Lakers did have to take second-year small forward Christian Eyenga along with Sessions, but he’s a small price to pay for getting the guy you want. It is tough to say whether he will be with the Lakers long, especially since they held onto some bench guys for the better parts of decades. Then again, he could be gone by next season.

Kupchak did a few things that were really nice on top of the trade itself. First, he got rid of Luke Walton. Walton is a 31-year-old small forward who has played in just nine games for the Lakers all season and looks more and more like his father every second. He hasn’t been doing anything on their team for a long time, so hopefully he’s somewhere now where he can get some playing time.

Dealing Jason Kapono was also a good idea as well. A 6’8” small forward just like Walton, Kapono is a journeyman, who has been with six teams in nine seasons in the league. He appeared in 27 games for the Lakers, but never seemed to have much effect on what was going on in the game. Maybe going back to the team that drafted him will bring him luck.

There’s also the deal of the first-round pick going to Cleveland. Now, while draft picks are much more valuable under the new CBA, this draft pick wasn’t going to help Los Angeles much. It would have been no better than 23rd or 24th overall, since the Lakers are probably going to be one of the higher seed in the playoffs.

Another potential issue this trade could have had after the fact would have been what to do with Derek Fisher and Steve Blake. However, Kupchak, apparently thinking of everything, smartly shipped Derek Fisher to Houston along with a second-round pick for Jordan Hill, also according to Wojnarowski.

Originally, there would have been some team dynamic issues regarding who should start. Fisher has started for nearly his entire career in Los Angeles and has always played big minutes. Now, the Lakers don’t have to worry about problems in that area. Sessions will start and be backed up by Steve Blake.

All in all, this was a masterful trade pulled off beautifully at the last second by Kupchak. The Lakers waited till the very end to make sure they got the best possible deal, and it paid off greatly.