The Los Angeles Lakers made the team’s first trade of the 2021-22 season by trading away Rajon Rondo essentially for an open roster spot. The Lakers sent Rondo to the Cleveland Cavaliers and in exchange received a non-guaranteed contract in Denzel Valentine. The Knicks were looped into the deal for Valentine, saving the Lakers $4 million in the process.
The Lakers could have just waived Rondo in order to make the extra roster spot but the team is so far over the luxury tax that it does not want to do that. The team would still have to pay Rondo’s full salary plus the salary of a new player plus the tax implications that would ensue. This way, the Lakers can essentially replace what they are paying Rondo for someone else.
The next player that the Los Angeles Lakers might trade is DeAndre Jordan.
The Los Angeles Lakers are not going to get anything of real value for DeAndre Jordan on the trade market but they could try and orchestrate a trade similar to the Rondo trade. Find a team that could use center depth, as the Cavaliers needed a point guard to replace the injured Ricky Rubio, and receive a non-guaranteed contract for him.
Of course, this dwindles down the list. Not every team needs a veteran center, especially considering Jordan has not been all that good. Even when we narrow the list down to teams that need centers, we still have to find teams that have non-guaranteed contracts to ship.
Luckily for the Lakers, trading Jordan is not impossible and there are some potential trades that could be done.
1. Trading DeAndre Jordan back to the Dallas Mavericks
DeAndre Jordan has already played for the Dallas Mavericks and is from Houston, so this could be a small homecoming for Jordan as he enters his later years as a pro. The Mavs fit the billing of a non-guaranteed contract as they have young center Moses Brown to trade.
Brown is actually getting minutes for the Mavericks and one could make the case that the Mavericks would not want to trade youth for experience in this situation. However, Brown is making such a minimal impact on the Mavericks and does not have any future potential that the team would regret trading.
The depth of the center position is quite thin for the Mavericks this season. Willie Cauley-Stein and Dwight Powell are the team’s two center options and while they have multiple bodies for the position, they could benefit from adding the veteran experience of Jordan to replace the minutes that Brown is playing.
Dallas is 24th in rebounding this season. While the team has Boban Marjanovic, he has not played much of a role at all this season, only logging 95 minutes for the team. Brown, on the other hand, is averaging 8.7 minutes per game in his last 13 games and Jordan could replace that and play around 10 minutes a game.
Again, it is not that impactful and the trade is not that exciting but for the cost of nothing, the Mavericks could at least try and shake it up with a veteran big.
2. Trading DeAndre Jordan to the Atlanta Hawks
The Atlanta Hawks are another team, like the Los Angeles Lakers and Dallas Mavericks, who are not playing up to expectations this season. The Hawks made it all the way to the Eastern Conference Finals last season and with a young roster, conventional wisdom told us that they would get even better with that playoff experience under their belt.
That has not been the case this season as the Hawks have struggled to put together any sort of momentum this season. The Hawks are not even in a playoff position if the season were to end today as they are 12th in the Eastern Conference with a 16-19 record.
This is not a team that is going to simply roll over and the Hawks should be looking to switch some things up in order to build a more cohesive unit. Trading for DeAndre Jordan is not going to suddenly raise the Hawks’ championship ceiling but it could be a small, positive addition in a slew of other moves.
While the team has a solid Clint Capela that starts at center, the depth leaves more to be desired. Gorgui Dieng is a bit undersized and is not the traditional rim-protecting and rebounding center that the Hawks might need to bring off the bench. That is all they have at the center position.
The Hawks also have a non-guaranteed contract to trade in Timothe Luwawu-Cabarrot. Luwawu-Cabarrot is averaging just 12.6 minutes per game this season and really is not making much of an impact on the Hawks. In fact, he has been making a negative impact with a -4.3 Box Plus/Minus.
The Hawks would have no problem flipping him in a deal like this.
3. Including DeAndre Jordan in a trade for Jeremy Lamb
This trade is nothing like the previous two trades in which the Lakers would be flipping Jordan to a team that could use his services in exchange, essentially, for a free roster spot. This trade is more complex than that and quite frankly, would be much better for the Los Angeles Lakers.
Not only would the team bring in someone who can help in the rotation in Jeremy Lamb but they are trimming some of the fat of the roster in order to make more room for other players. Granted, they are taking on Lamb’s $10.5 million salary but they are sending out $10 million in the three players that they traded.
The Lakers would be paying slightly more but they would still open up two roster spots to potentially sign other players. They don’t have to use both of them but these roster spots are coming at a very cheap price because of the Lamb deal.
The Indiana Pacers are likely going to have a fire sale before the trade deadline and Lamb is not one of their premier trade pieces. He is having a somewhat down season and his value is not as high as it would have been if they traded him before the season. That being said, his value then still would not have been that high.
The Lakers have reportedly already been interested in Lamb and this is a fair price for him. The Pacers are getting draft capital in the second-round pick (the Lakers have two second-round picks in 2023) and could even hope to keep Kendrick Nunn around an extra season to flip him for more assets to a contender as well.
This might be unlike the other DeAndre Jordan trades that we mentioned but with the Lakers needing to throw in a third player, it makes all the sense in the world for Jordan to be included with how he has played and with the team playing LeBron James and Anthony Davis at the five moving forward.