3 teams the Los Angeles Lakers can loop into a Kyrie Irving trade

1. Indiana Pacers

The Indiana Pacers are a team that, in theory, should be interested in trading for Russell Westbrook. Shams Charania reported earlier in the offseason that the Pacers could look to get off the contracts of Buddy Hield and Malcolm Brogdon and being an expiring, Westbrook made sense.

The only hang up is that Brogdon is a legitimately valuable player and the Pacers could probably get legitimate assets if they were to trade him on the market. Just the salary-cap relief is not enough and the Pacers would have to get more on top of that to intrigue them. However, the Lakers likely wouldn’t include a pick just for Hield and Brogdon.

That is different if they are instead getting Irving. Suddenly, trading one (or even two) picks to Indiana to get Westbrook there is a much easier task as they would be getting an all-star in return. Meanwhile, the Pacers would get their salary-cap space, get two juicy picks and would send Brogdon and Hield to the Nets.

This would be a pretty decent return for the Nets. Brogdon is a good point guard who can absolutely be the third-best player on a title-winning team (assuming Ben Simmons comes back and is the second-best player). Buddy Hield also adds nice depth to Brooklyn as a shooter.

While the Nets would need to add more frontcourt size, suddenly the rotation would be one more shooter deeper and that would make a big difference. Having Hield, Brogdon and Seth Curry in the backcourt is not a bad outlook whatsoever.