The Los Angeles Lakers are scrambling to make a trade during the 2022 NBA Trade deadline to improve on what has been an extremely disappointing season thus far. At this point, there is not much hope for the Lakers to turn it around.
While the offseason typically has bigger trades happen, the Lakers have pulled of some genius midseason trades in the past and might need to tap into some of that history to pull off yet another great midseason trade this season.
Here are the five greatest midseason trades in Los Angeles Lakers history.
5. The Los Angeles Lakers trade for Isaiah Thomas
This might be a confusing trade to include in the best midseason trades in Los Angeles Lakers history but this trade had intent behind it. The intent was not to get Isaiah Thomas and Channing Frye. The intent was to open up salary-cap space after the 2017-18 season.
Why? The Lakers wanted the cap space to sign LeBron James. We have no way of confirming if LeBron already had his mind set on coming to Los Angeles but it is quite hilarious that the Cavaliers made a trade that was meant to help LeBron’s team at the time while also opening the cap space for him to sign that summer.
The Lakers probably could have figured it out without this trade. They would have made it work to get LeBron in LA, that is without a doubt. However, this made it easy to sign LeBron with no strings attached and that alone is a big deal.