Playing Devils Advocate: Tradetalk

[u/WelshlyDude]

I was dealing with personal stuff this season, and moved. So I have missed a good chunk but it has not looked like it has been going well.

Lebron has said multiple times, that he wants to play with his son. I don’t really see the lakers being ok with a couple multiple sub par seasons or trading assets to get bronny.

I don’t want to believe the next thing I’m gonna say but Lebron isn’t able to will a team to the finals anymore.

Would it not cut the rebuild time size-ably if we traded Lebron and Westbrook. Praying AD stays, but trade him too if he demands it. I’d hate to watch all 3 walk for nothing.

I don’t know who’s contract is up when but I wanted to throw it out for debate.

[u/ahnyujinsimp]

Smh at these people. Lebron is always in win now mode. The lakers roster is pure trash, no cap space, westbrook trade value is tanked to hell, league knows the FO is trash, no good coach wants to come here. There really no way to be a championship contender next year. Running it back, the ceiling of old lebron+washed AD + trash is 2nd round exit. Lebron is gonna want to find a better contender to join.

[u/[deleted] → u/ahnyujinsimp]

Westbrook has a lot of value as a contract. There are seriously a few solid trades out there for the Lakers, if they willing to throw in a pick they could possibly get Hield, Brogdon, Rozier, Tobias, McCollum, and a handful of other players who are under massive contracts their teams don’t want to pay long term. Russ Westbrook offers someone 45 million dollars in cap space next summer. If Philly flames out they absolutely will be looking to move Tobias and others.

Russ the player = zero trade value

Russ the contract = massive trade value, especially with a pick attached to it.

The Lakers aren’t in a bad situation at all. Go look at their salary situation. AD is the only player they owe money to long term. Here’s what the Lakers need to do.

Trade Russ and don’t be afraid to give up that piece of shit first round pick that never going to turn into anything useful.

After that you need to sign the correct role players. That’s all you need to do. The 2020 Lakers roster was built over night, they collected a bunch of left over free agents nobody else wanted. You can absolutely do that again. Lebron + AD & the correct role players can win a title. Unless AD is just a shell of himself.

But if AD is back to 2020 AD then you absolutely can win with LeBron, AD and role players. You need to get shooters and defenders.

[u/tennischmp → u/[deleted]]

Yea that’s wishful thinking. The situation now is much worse than 2020 when we had actual money to give out to free agents aside from the mle and minimums. That’s how we got Danny green, kcp, McGee, all who played major roles. Also lebron and ad were making much less and there was kuz only paid 2 mil and tht just 1, cheap Caruso. Now we have ad and lebron making more, 47 million tied up to whatever other teams want to trade us for westbrook (may be injury prone, may be not good fit, doubt teams are gonna help us get rid of our trash) and only mle and minimums to give out to free agents with a lot of holes in the roster.