The Los Angeles Lakers should pass on Terrence Ross
This one I really don’t understand and Buckley is not the only one that has proposed Ross to the Lakers. There is a contingent of fans that have brought up Ross’s name as a potential trade target and quite frankly, it would only make the Los Angeles Lakers worse.
Gordon at least has the high three-point percentage so I can understand why someone would talk themselves into the Lakers trading for him. Ross does not have that and he does not have the defense either. He is a better defender than Gordon, sure, but he is no longer a valuable defensive player in the NBA.
At one point Ross was a decent option to be a cheap defensive wing in a playoff rotation. However, he was never more than slightly above-average and now he is below-average. Ross has posted a -1.2 Defensive Box Plus/Minus this season and has been in the negative (meaning he is below-average) the last four seasons.
Add that to the fact that he is shooting 30.5% from beyond the arc this season and it is hard to see the value in Ross, especially if you are paying him $12.5 million. The team already has one really disappointing wing player in Kent Bazemore. Why add another?
The only way that Ross should be a Laker is if he is included in some kind of salary dump trade that lands Westbrook in Orlando. The Magic are really the only team that has the contracts to send for a Westbrook salary dump and is bad enough to do it.