Los Angeles Lakers Rumors: What players the Lakers can trade realistically

Everyone forgets who Rich Paul is, and he made sure Caldwell-Pope stays 

KCP probably is a really nice guy, but when his name comes up attached to the Lakers, it seems that it just rubs people the wrong way. Most already believe he was wildly overpaid based on his production from day one. Also, it is believed that he would have been gone long ago if he wasn’t a Klutch Sports client.

We know Josh Hart is one of those people. Now in Lake Show Life’s six degrees of separation tactic of illustration, let’s follow along because it can get confusing.

Earlier this year Josh Hart did an appearance on the “Inside the Green Room” podcast with former Toronto Raptors, now Lakers guard, Danny Green. Hart talked about the heavily reported trade discussions between the Lakers and New Orleans Pelicans at the trade deadline in February.

It seems that two players were untouchable in the trade talks according to Josh. LeBron James (Like duh!) and Kentavious Caldwell-Pope.

"“You’re going through it and you’re like ‘Alright, man.’ You had no idea. Like, really, it seemed like nobody was untouchable honestly, besides LeBron and KCP. That was the only untouchable pieces. Fortunately for me, my name wasn’t really thrown in there until the last day when basically everyone on the roster was allegedly getting traded. It was just a weird situation because you had no idea.”"

For the record, Caldwell-Pope was eventually included in one of the 753 trade proposals the Lakers reportedly sent the Pelicans, proposals that Lake Show Life knew the Pelicans would never accept. But let’s break down what Hart and many others are wondering about KCP’s status.

The easiest theory to accept is that his agent, Rich Paul, wanted to keep him in Los Angeles with his two other clients, James and Davis. Could that be true? Who knows. It’s the other factors that many people miss that make moving Caldwell-Pope difficult.

Caldwell-Pope signed consecutive one-year deals with the Lakers in free agency. In doing so thanks to the NBA Collective Bargaining Agreement, he had a de facto no-trade clause in his contract.

That clause protects KCP’s “Bird Rights” which he would lose with his next team if traded. In short, Paul and James did not matter in this trade scenario because KCP has to sign off on any trade.

Maybe this situation made KCP’s message clear on leaving L.A.

Now that this discussion has been illustrated, get used to Kentavious Caldwell-Pope. He’s not going anywhere.