The Los Angeles Lakers were at a crossroads in the offseason. At virtually the exact same time, two different Lakers rumors began surfacing: one saying that the team was about to trade for Sacramento’s Buddy Hield, and another that said the team would trade for Washington’s Russell Westbrook.
In the end, the Lakers ended up trading for Westbrook instead of Hield in what will go down as a fork in the road moment for the franchise. While trading for Hield would not have guaranteed a ring, it would have guaranteed a much more manageable situation than the current one that exists with Westbrook.
The Lakers made the wrong choice when the Hield trade was right there. Even Kyle Kuzma thought it was a done deal and that he was heading up to Northern California.
According to recent Lakers rumors, the team is trying to right that wrong by trading for Buddy Hield once more.
Chris Haynes of Yahoo Sports reported that the Los Angeles Lakers offered the Kings a package centered around Buddy Hield and the Kings rejected the offer. It is not surprising that the Kings rejected the Lakers’ first offer as THT does not seem to have much trade value, if any, this year.
This is definitely something that was leaked by someone on the Kings’ side of things to try and leverage into the Lakers trading more assets for Hield. And with how desperate the Lakers seem, it might just work.
This might push the Lakers to offer a trade package that the Kings cannot say no to. While they said no to the initial offer, the Lakers can certainly raise the value. On the following page we are going to break down the trade package that it would take for the Kings to say yes as well as break down whether the Lakers should do it.
The trade package to land Buddy Hield:
Just to make the money match the Los Angeles Lakers would have to trade Kendrick Nunn and two expiring contracts to the Kings. The most likely contracts to be traded in a deal like this are DeAndre Jordan and Kent Bazemore as the Lakers already want to trade those two to open up roster spots.
The Kings have no use for these two players and can just outright waive them. They add nothing to Sacramento and are just thrown in there for money reasons.
THT is the centerpiece of the deal when it comes to a player but as we mentioned, teams are not as interested in THT as the Lakers thought they would be (should have traded him 10 months ago for Kyle Lowry!!!). THT adds some value to the Kings, but the real value comes in the picks.
The Lakers are going to have to trade two first-round picks to get Hield off of Sacramento even if they do not think he is worth that much draft capital. The Kings hold all the leverage here and realistically speaking, the Lakers would have to overpay a bit as a division rival to keep Sacramento from trading him to an Eastern Conference team.
The Kings absolutely would say yes to a trade that has two first-round picks. The Lakers might try and protect that 2027 first-round pick but the Kings could probably force them to trade an unprotected pick.
The Lakers cannot outright trade their pick in the 2023 NBA Draft they can only offer a trade swap. If the pick is not good enough, Sacramento could roll it over to the next pick swap the Lakers can offer, the 2026 NBA Draft.
Should the Los Angeles Lakers make this trade for Buddy Hield?
Absolutely not. But there are two questions that we have to answer.
This would not be a good trade for the Lakers to make. While Hield would have been a significantly better option to trade for than Russell Westbrook, that does not mean the Lakers should fork over all of these assets for him now (especially considering the rumored original trade package was just Kuzma, Montrezl Harrell and a first).
Two first-round picks for Hield is a tall order. Hield is probably not worth that much draft capital alone and it would be such a bad look if the Lakers trade all of that with THT to get Hield. THT is the guy that kept the Lakers from trading for Kyle Lowry and is the guy they chose over Alex Caruso. And you now have to package two firsts with him to get a borderline top-50 guy in Hield? Yikes.
Hield would have been great at a third scorer with LeBron James and Anthony Davis. With Russell Westbrook, it is hard to see his fit. The team is already struggling with only having one basketball and they already have several role players who can shoot and don’t play defense.
Quite frankly, the Lakers could get exactly what they are looking for out of Buddy Hield if they just played Malik Monk more!
The second question we have to answer is would the Los Angeles Lakers do this?
Unfortunately, I do not think we can rule that out. This is the same team that traded actual assets for Westbrook when no other team in the league wanted him and if there is no other deal on the table by February 10, I can absolutely see Rob Pelinka making the desperation move.
We have to cross our fingers that this doesn’t happen and if it does it is just going to significantly hurt the future of the team without making this year’s team much better.