{"id":138696,"date":"2025-05-09T09:00:21","date_gmt":"2025-05-09T13:00:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/?p=138696"},"modified":"2025-05-09T09:06:25","modified_gmt":"2025-05-09T13:06:25","slug":"lakers-offseason-trade-prospects","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/2025\/05\/09\/lakers-offseason-trade-prospects\/","title":{"rendered":"Lakers Trade Prospects Should Resemble Departed Players"},"content":{"rendered":"

There\u2019s still no definitive word coming out of the LeBron James<\/a> camp regarding his future with the Los Angeles Lakers<\/a>. Much like the last two seasons, James has ended his final press conference, indicating he doesn\u2019t know how much longer he\u2019ll play, and it\u2019s the same music playing presently. That said, there is the belief that LeBron<\/a> will return for at least one more season, and it\u2019s likely with the Lakers with one more crack at a fifth championship alongside Luka Don\u010di\u0107<\/a>. That said, Los Angeles has more than the status of their two stars on which to focus their attention. Potential Lakers trade prospects will start to come up for discussion sooner rather than later, and it could involve integral qualities that exited via trades this past season.<\/p>\n

Lakers Trade Prospects Should Resemble Departed Players<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Los Angeles Lakers expected to instigate more trade activity this offseason to build around Luka Don\u010di\u0107\u00a0<\/strong><\/h3>\n

There is no denying that the Lakers changed dramatically after the Don\u010di\u0107 trade that sent Anthony Davis<\/a> packing in the other direction. While the addition of Luka was franchise-altering, it left the Lakers bereft of size in the paint, and this was evident more than ever in their first-round series against the Minnesota Timberwolves<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

LA needs someone like Davis or someone as close to him as they can get their hands on. Given that the 2024-25 season was one of Rob Pelinka\u2019s more productive years related to trades and signings, he is expected to produce even more this offseason. Aside from a center, LA also needs more depth scoring and defenders. According to Lakers insider Mike Bresnahan<\/a>, who suspects the Lakers will make moves, they need to go after some of the same qualities they lost in Davis and D’Angelo Russell<\/a>.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThey had that guy D-Lo [D’Angelo Russell], they traded him a few days after Christmas, he was going to get his 14-15 off the bench, but you acquired a defender in Dorian Finney-Smith<\/a>,\u201d <\/span><\/em>Bresnahan said<\/span>. \u201cI think you make that trade 10 times out of 10, but now this off-season, to me, is chasing what they gave up in their two big trades.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cA big man who can block shots, get rebounds, maybe stretch the court a little bit more than AD could. And then, of course, when you unload a guy like D\u2019Angelo, who had his faults, but he could score, 15 off the bench. Gonna be chasing, I think, those two types of players during the off-season, with not much money to spend. Yeah, I sense a trade coming for sure.\u201d<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

Building around Luka (and probably LeBron)<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Within the first few weeks of playing together, you could see the beginnings of a positive connection between Don\u010di\u0107 and Jaxson Hayes<\/a>. Luka’s lob threat in Hayes was working at first, but eventually, Hayes fell completely out of the rotation. The Lakers must seek out what Luka had in Dereck Lively II<\/a> and Daniel Gafford<\/a> in Dallas. A true center for Luka to throw lobs to and get the ball in the paint will do wonders next season.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

As for LeBron, LA needs more scoring around him\u2014more reliable scoring. D\u2019Lo certainly had his flaws, but he was a penciled-in double-digit scorer every night. The Lakers need to find someone who can do that, but with more consistency and defensive upside, which D\u2019Lo did not provide. All in all, this Lakers team, with all the trades they made this past season, took them to another level, but the work is not done. With Luka as the future, they\u2019re obligated to complement him with everything they can and he needs. <\/span><\/p>\n


\u00a9 Jonathan Hui-Imagn Images<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There\u2019s still no definitive word coming out of the LeBron James camp regarding his future with the Los Angeles Lakers. Much like the last two seasons, James has ended his final press conference, indicating he doesn\u2019t know how much longer he\u2019ll play, and it\u2019s the same music playing presently. That said, there is the belief […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5081,"featured_media":138697,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"no","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[26,1608,62],"tags":[240,307,1453,4840,2272,1962,38,1133],"class_list":["post-138696","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lakers","category-basketball","category-nba","tag-anthony-davis","tag-dangelo-russell","tag-daniel-gafford","tag-dereck-lively-ii","tag-dorian-finney-smith","tag-jaxson-hayes","tag-lebron-james","tag-luka-doncic"],"modified_by":"Aaron J Zacharias","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138696","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5081"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=138696"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138696\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":138700,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138696\/revisions\/138700"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/138697"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=138696"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=138696"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=138696"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}