The Los Angeles Lakers traded Marc Gasol and a future second-round pick to the Memphis Grizzlies in return for the draft rights to Wang Zhelin. The Grizzlies subsequently worked a buyout with Gasol.
This was a move that was coming for quite some time. The Marc Gasol experience did not go as planned and after the team signed DeAndre Jordan it made no sense to keep Gasol around. By trading him, the Lakers opened up another roster spot that they can use to improve the team.
Some fans seem to be under the impression that the roster spot will be used on Zhelin. There have been countless articles that are getting to know the Chinese center that the Lakers traded for and while it is great to profile him, Laker fans really should not be getting their hopes up.
He is not even going to be a member of the Los Angeles Lakers next season. Let me explain why.
Why Wang Zhelin won’t be on the Los Angeles Lakers next season:
You have to consider the moving pieces of this deal and Zhelin himself. Many Laker fans are getting extremely excited because Zhelin was the MVP of the CBA in 2019 and seems to have a lot of potential as a seven-footer.
Fans of every sport do this. They always hype up the unknown player that their team drafts or trades for. Every NBA fanbase does it for their second-round picks, every NFL fanbase does it for their seventh-round picks.
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While Zhelin’s accomplishments are great, they make it less likely that he will come to the league. Zhelin is going to make more money playing in the CBA as a star player than he is going to make if he comes to the league and plays in the G League or is a two-way player.
There is a reason why Zhelin was drafted in 2016 and has not come to the league. Getting traded to the Los Angeles Lakers five years later is not going to magically change that. The Lakers have the rights to him if he ever does decide to come to the U.S. but he likely won’t.
If Zhelin was as promising as these base-level feature stories are painting him out to be then why would the Memphis Grizzlies essentially give him away? Even if he did not want to be a Grizzlie, they probably could have traded him for more than a future pick that will be in the 50s and an old center that they are simply going to buy out.
A great example of this is the first Lakers-Grizzlies trade to feature Marc Gasol. The Los Angeles Lakers traded the draft rights to Gasol, who was very promising, for a legitimate star in Pau Gasol. If Zhelin was really this blue-chipper prospect then he would have been included in something much larger.
Instead, his draft rights are mere filler to make the trade possible and open up a roster spot for the Lakers. The team already made it clear that it does not want to waste spots on guys who can’t contribute on the court (Jared Dudley) so why would they then turn around and bring a 27-year-old Zhelin in to not play as the third center? They wouldn’t.
I get it, it is exciting to see that the Los Angeles Lakers traded for someone who was the MVP in their particular league. But by October, you probably won’t even remember that the Lakers have his draft rights.