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When Desmond Bane was traded, a popular sentiment across social media was to marvel at the return on a good-but-not-great player — especially in comparison to what stars have recently been going for. Four unprotected first-rounders and two productive role players in Kentavious Caldwell-Pope and Cole Anthony is a very nice haul. The key to the deal? Timing.
Just ask the Los Angeles Lakers. When the rest of the league knows a team has to do something, that task becomes all but impossible. Sources close to the Lakers and around the league say that trade talks have not gone as the Lakers would have liked because teams are once again trying to benefit directly from the Lakers' bungling of the center position and mishandling of their assets over the last few years.
The recent history of this makes the lesson crystal clear.
Jimmy Butler fetched a fraction of his worth after he made things so toxic that the Miami Heat suspended him. De'Aaron Fox was traded to the San Antonio Spurs for mostly bad long-term money and a couple of mid-tier picks after he demanded a trade because that situation eroded around him. Whenever Kevin Durant is finally traded by the Phoenix Suns, whoever lands him will have likely done so without moving heaven or earth.
Let's just ignore the Luka Doncic trade; it's the outlier to all rules ever.
Point being: When the rest of the NBA's executives know a team is under immense pressure to do something as soon as it possibly can, they're going to try to take advantage of the situation and are almost always successful to varying degrees.
What's maddening about the Lakers' frustrations on the center market is, well, they should've learned from their own recent experience dealing with a trade market that knows exactly what they have to do.
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“The worst spot you can put yourself in is trying to negotiate while everyone knows about your desperation,” a former executive said when asked about this predicament. “The whole league knows that not only do the Lakers need a starting center and probably a backup, but they need to bring someone in who Luka is going to want to play with. They basically have to hope someone else reaches their current level of desperation so that the talks can be held on even footing.”
At the first trade deadline after the Russell Westbrook signing was all too clearly a disaster that needed to be addressed as soon as humanly possible, teams from far and wide made it known that they would take on Westbrook's albatross contract for the low, low price of several first-round picks.
The following summer, after the Lakers stubbornly held onto Westbrook and wasted a season, the collective assumption was that surely they'd trade Westbrook before the next season. But nope, they didn't. The offers were still below what Rob Pelinka was willing to accept, so they embarked on yet another season of that debacle and finally moved him at the deadline.
The deal they finally executed seemed productive in the moment, but all they got was a few months of Malik Beasley, a year or so of D'Angelo Russell and Jarred Vanderbilt, whose contract is one of the more negative assets in the league. Pelinka almost certainly would've been better off spending the additional pick to bring in Myles Turner and Buddy Hield from the Indiana Pacers, but that's just a fun sliding door moment that certainly doesn't keep any Lakers fans up at night.
Compare this to when they traded for Dorian Finney-Smith, who just the year prior was seen as worth at least one first-round pick. Pelinka was able to land the veteran wing for no first-round draft capital in what was widely praised as a great deal. In that case, it was known the Lakers would eventually move Russell, but they didn't have such a dire positional need as they're faced with now.
Sources close to the team reiterated that the internal plan is to trade for their starting center – sources say they've held conversations with other teams about Nic Claxton, Robert Williams, Walker Kessler and others – then, ideally, use the taxpayer midlevel on his backup – Brook Lopez and Clint Capela are the two names most often linked to the Lakers. It's a solid plan that they're considered likely to be able to execute. But, because of their clear and desperate need at the position, such an approach is going to be a lot more complicated than it would've been had they not neglected the position the past couple of seasons.
