With depth being an issue, insiders believe the Lakers will be looking for a center and a point guard in the trade market to help improve the roster.
Trade season unofficially begins on Dec. 15, when players who signed contracts over the summer will be able to switch teams. There were 85 free agents who signed in the offseason, so a significant number of players will go from unavailable to movable on this date.
With the market opening up and the Lakers appearing to be buyers, Tim Bontemps and Brian Windhorst of ESPN wrote about what the Lakers want to acquire before the Feb. 6 trade deadline.
The Lakers remain armed with D’Angelo Russell’s $18.6 million expiring contract, plus several more minimum players on expiring deals, as well as their 2029 and 2031 first-round picks, but it’s going to be difficult for one trade to fix the myriad issues with the current roster. That has led to a belief among rival scouts and executives that the Lakers would love to find both a point guard and a big man to fill out their roster — though adding both, with the team’s limited assets, won’t be easy.
This is consistent with rumors we've heard about the Lakers' interest in players like Brook Lopez and Jonas Valančiūnas.
The Lakers are short on bigs. Christian Wood has not played this season and Jaxson Hayes is out with an ankle sprain. Their backups are two-way players Christian Koloko and Armel Traore.
Austin Reaves is having a career year, averaging 16.8 points per game, but a traditional point guard is lacking on this roster.
Since the Nets appear to be sellers, perhaps a guard like Dennis Schröder can make a return to the Lakers and provide the team with a primary ball handler.
While these types of deals might not rock the NBA world, a big move for a player like Jimmy Butler is next to impossible, given how it would decimate the team's roster.
For now, the franchise is clearly aiming for more depth than a splashy name.
With the Lakers being buyers in this market, the question is, how desirable is a player like Russell to teams around the league?
What other players can you package and do you have to give up those coveted first round picks to make a deal? Will it be enough to make them contenders?
These are all tough questions and there are no easy answers. This is the time of the year when vice president of basketball operations, Rob Pelinka, earns his salary. He will have to navigate the team out of mediocrity and put the franchise in a position for, as he called it, "sustainable Lakers excellence."
The only thing about the Lakers that has been sustainable over the past three seasons is their presence in the play-in tournament.
You can follow Edwin on Twitter at @ECreates88.
