Despite having an extremely underwhelming season thus far, the Los Angeles Lakers ultimately did not make a trade by the time the 2022 NBA trade deadline passed. For some fans this was disappointing as the Lakers seemingly needed a shot in the arm to turn things around and stayed inactive instead.
While being upset by the inactivity is understandable, this was actually a good thing for the Lakers. With how the market unfolded, the Lakers were wise to simply hold tight and hope that things turn around.
They probably won’t turn around, but hey, you can always hope when you have one of the greatest players of all time.
3 reasons why the Los Angeles Lakers not making a trade at the deadline is a great thing:
1. There is still the buyout market
The deadline has passed and now coming is the buyout market. Several high-priced contracts will eventually be bought out by their old/new teams and those players will look to provide a spark for a contending.
The Lakers are not as good of a buyout destination as they were the last two seasons but they still present a player the chance to compete on a massive stage that could improve their value for the upcoming offseason.
The Lakers were not going to get a huge improvement at the deadline and anyone the team did bring in via trade is probably just going to have the same impact as any future buyout targets. Why spend an asset for someone who you could end up getting for just the cost of his salary (and the extra luxury tax implications)?
That is not the only reason why the Lakers’ patience was a good thing.
2. The Lakers didn’t compound a bad move with another bad move
The worst thing that the Los Angeles Lakers could have done in the offseason was trade for Russell Westbrook. Westbrook clearly was not going to fit with this team and completely restricted the team from making future adjustments. Not only did the Lakers have to trade away the assets that the team did have but it also does not have much room to add.
The only asset left in Los Angeles was Talen Horton-Tucker, who has been disappointing and has seen his value decrease as a result. Personally, I believe that the Lakers should have traded THT for Kyle Lowry last season when that was on the table, but it did not happen.
Just because the Lakers missed the window to trade THT for top value and because they made a bad trade for Westbrook does not mean they should continue to scramble. We see NBA teams do this all the time and it really seemed like the Lakers were going to as well. They make a bad move (or several) and then compound them with more bad moves out of desperation to try and fix the initial bad move.
Trading THT should not have been off the table but it really seems like the best thing the team could have gotten for him was Terrence Ross. That would have simply been an example of compounding a previous bad move with another bad move.
In reality, flipping THT for someone like Ross would not have changed anything for this team… which brings us to our final point.
3. No trade was going to fix the Los Angeles Lakers
Sometimes a team has to look itself in the mirror and be realistic about the current situation. While it is fun to be optimistic and hopeful that a trade would spark change, it really would not have. Making a trade at the deadline would not have changed anything about the ceiling of this Lakers team. If the ceiling is going to change then they have to fix it themselves.
There was only one thing that could have changed the ceiling of the Lakers and that would have been to trade Russell Westbrook in a salary dump trade. However, that would have taken at least one, if not two first-round picks to pull off. That is something the team had no interest in doing.
Trading THT for a marginally better role player was not going to suddenly fix the Lakers. Even if the team pulled off the best-case scenario trade for someone like Buddy Hield, it was not going to raise the team’s ceiling.
So why punt on someone you have bet on (THT) for a role player that is going to have a marginal impact in the grand scheme of things? It is one thing to trade THT for a role player if the Lakers were a team that was one piece away. They aren’t. They are a team that has one (large) piece that simply does not fit the puzzle.
Sure, it is boring and it would have been awesome to see the team pull off a big trade. It simply was not going to happen and never was going to happen.
Thankfully, Rob Pelinka and co. did the right thing by being patient. The situation of the team still sucks, but at least they did not make it worse.