5. Russell Westbrook
Russell Westbrook almost didn’t even make this list as it is going to be a tall order for the Lakers to trade him this season. The Westbrook trade has been a disaster for the Lakers so much to the point that the team already discussed internally about trading Westbrook this season.
Every other team in the league is seeing what is going on in LA and Westbrook does not really have any trade value. He is on a massive contract that only gets bigger next season and is not even a top-30 player in the league anymore. Sure, he gets stats, but he does not play winning basketball.
While it is far-fetched, we did decide to at least include him on this list since the Lakers are definitely going to be trying to trade him. There are also two types of deals the Lakers could make for him, although they are still far-fetched.
The first type of trade is to find a bad team in the NBA and trade that team assets (future picks) alongside Westbrook for some expiring contracts that don’t have much value. There is one potential team the Lakers could call for that type of trade and we broke it down here.
The other is to try and work out some intricate multi-team deal that checks off multiple boxes for each team and actually makes sense. Those are far-fetched but we did come up with this trade that actually works and makes sense for all parties involved.