Horrible Defense
It’s no secret that Isaiah has always lacked an impact on the defensive end. Between his time on the Lakers and Cavs, Isaiah had a 115.0 defensive rating. That rating is far worse than the Lakers’ and Cavs’ overall DRTGs for the season, which are 105.8 (13th in the league) and 109.5 (29th), respectively.
When you’re 5’9” in the NBA, that’ll happen no matter how hard you’re playing on defense. This is a major concern for any team that signs him, whether it is the Lakers or another team. They’ll have to tweak their lineups/defensive coverages to cover for his bad defense when he’s on the court.
When Isaiah was an MVP candidate last year with the Celtics, anyone would have been willing to change their defensive game plan to have his ability to score 28.9 PPG on their roster. Now that his ability to score in this league is in doubt, it probably wouldn’t be the best for the Lakers to sign him unless they were confident in hiding Isaiah in coverages on the defensive end.