Los Angeles Lakers: Why a Myles Turner trade is extremely unlikely
By Jason Reed
1. The Los Angeles Lakers cannot piece together a worthwhile trade package
The biggest issue here for the Los Angeles Lakers is Turner’s contract. It is not large but it is one that the Lakers would have to package several players in order to obtain. Turner is getting paid $17.5 million this season, which is too high to piece together some of the smaller contracts on the roster.
The Lakers would have to make a tough decision and trade one of Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, Montrezl Harrell or Dennis Schroder in order to reasonably make ths deal possible and that is not going to happen. The team would not be getting better by flipping any of those three for Turner.
It would take more than just that for the Pacers to be willing to trade Turner as well. Talen Horton-Tucker would certainly have to be in the deal as well as future draft capital. So the Lakers would be trading future value and would not really be getting better because of who they would have to trade in return.
It is possible to do the trade without one of those three players but it would take literally trading over a third of the roster. The Lakers could make the salaries work if they traded Alex Caruso, Wesley Matthews, Markieff Morris, Jared Dudley, Alfonzo McKinnie and Talen Horton-Tucker.
Yeah, the Los Angeles Lakers are not going to do that and they are not going to trade KCP, Schroder or Harrell for Turner. But there are more reasons why this trade will not happen in case you are not convinced and think the team would be willing to trade KCP.