The Los Angeles Lakers rumors are starting to pick up with the February 10th trade deadline just around the corner. After a disappointing half-season thus far, the Lakers are scrambling to make any sort of improvements that could potentially increase the team’s chances of winning a title in 2022.
The most prominent player in the Lakers rumors cycle is Talen Horton-Tucker. THT is the one young asset that the Lakers have and it appears as if the team is shopping him throughout the league. LA reportedly offered THT alongside Kendrick Nunn and a first-round pick in 2027 for Jerami Grant, to which the Pistons said no.
The Pistons obviously did not think the package had enough value and they are not the only team in the league that does not seem to value the young talent that the Lakers have to offer. According to recent reports, teams have not shown any interest in the Lakers’ “big” package of THT, Nunn and a future first.
We already know that the team’s 2027 first-round pick has garnered at least some interest from teams. Nunn is nothing more than a throw-in contract as he has not played yet this season, which leads us to THT. Just reading the tea leaves, it is pretty clear that Talen Horton-Tucker does not have much trade value.
This might be shocking to Laker fans. For three years now THT has been touted as this player with immense potential, so much so that the Lakers paid just under $10 million for him and chose him over Alex Caruso. Fans tend to overvalue their own players at times and this is another example of that. The fact that no teams are interested shows that Laker fans have overvalued the 21-year-old.
Lakers rumors: Teams are right to not value Talen Horton-Tucker much in trades.
While we are still hopeful in THT’s potential and the Lakers’ ability to get the most out of him as they have with so many other players, THT has shown nothing for another team to want to trade significant assets for him.
This is a league of the three-point shot and THT is a backcourt player who can’t shoot. He is shooting just 25% from three this season and as we have seen with Ben Simmons (albeit his situation is different), being a backcourt player that cannot shoot hurts a player’s value and makes them a hard fit. THT has nowhere close to the elite defense that Simmons brings to the table.
That is another thing about THT’s game: his defensive ability often gets overstated. While he has all the makings of being a good defensive player and has shown it in spurts, he has not been consistent. Heck, he has a -0.1 Defensive Box Plus/Minus this season. That puts him slightly below average.
THT has been extremely inefficient on the offensive side of the ball and has not made up for it defensively. When there are so many young players in the league with potential, it is not hard to see why teams would not value THT as much as the Lakers do. THT ranks 193rd out of 201 players with at least 800 minutes played in NBA Math’s Total Points Added statistic. Spoiler: that is not good.
That does not mean that the Lakers should trade THT for a lesser package like Eric Gordon, that would be a bad thing. At this point, the best course of action is to forego these Lakers rumors and simply keep THT and hope he pans out.
However, there is a good chance that he never realizes the potential that Laker fans thought he had, which is why teams are not so interested in him after all.