The Los Angeles Lakers reportedly have a group of players on their roster that they’d like to deal away, but finding landing spots for them has proven to be difficult.
During this week’s episode of Buha’s Block, The Athletic’s Jovan Buha named guards D’Angelo Russell and Gabe Vincent among the players the Lakers would like to move, but noted that teams around the league aren’t very interested in giving up assets for them.
“D’Angelo Russell and Jarred Vanderbilt, Gabe Vincent, Rui Hachimura, they have somewhere between neutral to negative trade value across the league,” Buha said. “There are certain teams that have interest in maybe one of those guys, but there are very few if any teams that have interest in multiple of those guys, and that’s ultimately been why the Lakers have been not able to find a deal.”
Russell chose to opt in for his $18.7 million contract with the Lakers for the 2024-25 season, but Buha noted at the time that the team was “expected to be aggressive” in exploring trades involving him. The 28-year-old was Los Angeles’ third-leading scorer behind LeBron James and Anthony Davis at 18.0 points per game last season, so he should have the largest trade market of any of the players Buha listed.
Outside of drafting Dalton Knecht and Bronny James, the Lakers have had a relatively quiet offseason that included failed pursuits of Klay Thompson and DeMar DeRozan.
It sounds like Los Angeles will have to roll with the players currently on its roster before trade opportunities open up during the 2024-25 campaign.
