Los Angeles Lakers: Why Talen-Horton Tucker is now untouchable

The Los Angeles Lakers are mostly finished with the offseason moves. The team’s roster currently stands at 14 players, with the 15th roster spot likely being saved for an in-season move (although that is not a guarantee).

Most of the offseason activity might be in the rear-view mirror but that does not stop the NBA landscape from speculating. It is the nature of the business and even we broke down three possible teams that could look to trade a non-guaranteed contract for Marc Gasol.

A potential Gasol trade where the Lakers flip a veteran for someone they can waive is possible and has been done many times before. They literally did it with JaVale McGee to open up the salary-cap space to sign Gasol. Some players, though simply won’t be traded.

Talen Horton-Tucker is one of the untouchable players on the Los Angeles Lakers.

Talen Horton-Tucker is the youngest player on the Los Angeles Lakers with boatloads of potential. We have already seen him contribute on a title-caliber team at just 20 years old. His size, length and basketball IQ, the sky is the limit for THT and we might not even see him start his peak for another 5-6 years.

The Lakers definitely could leverage his potential into improving the rotation for the 2021-22 season. Brad Botkin of CBS Sports recently broke down several potential Ben Simmons trades and one of the trades included multiple teams and the Lakers trading THT.

The Lakers were not getting Simmons in return. Instead, their involvement in the deal was to get Seth Curry to LA. Curry is one of the best three-point shooters in the league and would help the team’s shooting efforts, we cannot deny that.

However, with some solid three-point shooters already on the roster, and JJ Redick in free agency, the Lakers are not desperate to make a move for Curry. Even if they were desperate, they are not moving off of THT anytime soon.

Remember that this is the same player that the Los Angeles Lakers refused to trade for Kyle Lowry. Lowry is old, and it was only half a season of his services, but he is still more impactful than Seth Curry and at the time THT was only guaranteed to be a Laker for another half-season as well.

This is the same player that the Lakers decided to re-sign over Alex Caruso, who is one of the best defensive guards in the league. With the luxury tax situation, the Lakers essentially had to pick between THT and Caruso. They picked THT.

Before the team re-signed THT there was some potential for a trade. If the team was worried that he would get an offer that they could not match they could have flipped him in a sign-and-trade to get some sort of asset out of him. That obviously did not happen and the window for a trade has been shut for the time being.

The team would not go through all of that, sign him to a multi-year deal and then trade him as soon as they could. In the future maybe you can make the case if a trade presents itself for a star that the Lakers cannot resist.

But that is not going to happen any time soon, warranting THT as untouchable. In fact, the only players on the Los Angeles Lakers who are more untouchable than THT are LeBron James and Anthony Davis. Everyone else would be traded from LA before the team traded THT.