A 3-team Russell Westbrook trade to get Zach LaVine on the Lakers
By Jason Reed
Why the Knicks could say yes:
This salary-dump trade between the Los Angeles Lakers and New York Knicks has been proposed before and this is merely tweaking that trade to add a third team and redirect Randle and Fournier to another team instead of the Los Angeles Lakers.
If the Knicks were to voluntarily include themselves in this three-team trade it would be under the notion that the Knicks want to reboot, build around R.J. Barrett and open up cap space for next summer.
Both Randle and Fournier are under multi-year deals and it is clear that after this season that this group is not going to be close to contending. Instead of having a ceiling of a sixth seed in the East, the Knicks could bite the bullet and trade the contracts for an expiring.
New York would obviously be better off trying to shop Randle and Fournier for actual assets but after the season they had there would not be a lot of suitors. No contending team is going to have the contracts to send in return that make sense for New York and a bad team won’t trade anyone with potential for Randle.
This package is better for the Knicks than just doing a straight-up trade with the Lakers, though. With the Lakers getting an all-star in return, they would be significantly more likely to trade both the first-round picks that they are able to trade this offseason.
The Knicks would be getting the cap space they are looking for after the 2022-23 season and two first-round picks that they hope are as valuable as this year’s pick from the Lakers.