Clippers are shopping a perfect trade target for the Lakers

The Los Angeles Lakers are looking to improve this offseason by any means necessary and there is nothing that is off the table. Right now, the big move for the Lakers looks to be a potential Kyrie Irving trade as the Lakers are considered the most significant threat to land Kyrie this summer.

Lesser trades are still on the table as the Lakers could be looking to move former second-round pick Talen Horton-Tucker. Los Angeles already reportedly failed to trade him yet again this offseason, so there is a decent chance he is not wearing the purple and gold next season.

The Los Angeles Clippers are now shopping a perfect trade target for the Lakers that Rob Pelinka might call about and offer THT up for. According to Sean Deveney of Heavy.com, the Clippers are looking to trade sharpshooter Luke Kennard this offseason. The Clippers prefer to trade him before the draft, but will reportedly try and move him later in the offseason if unsuccessful.

Kennard led all of basketball in three-point shooting last season as he shot 44.9% from the field. He is a career 42.5% three-point shooter and has shot 44.8% from beyond the arc over the last two years combined in 647 attempts.

Defensively Kennard leaves more to be desired but if there is one trait that fits nicely next to LeBron James it is three-point shooting. Kennard is among the best of the best at that and would be perfect with the Lakers.

But do the Los Angeles Lakers have enough to trade for Luke Kennard?

While the Clippers are shopping him and are giving up some leverage by doing so, the Lakers simply do not have enough to offer to convince their cross-hall rivals to let him switch Los Angeles jerseys.

The best package the Lakers could send the Clippers is Talen Horton-Tucker and Kendrick Nunn for Kennard. If the Clippers were a lottery team and Kennard was an expiring contract then that might be enough. In this context, it simply isn’t, even if Kennard is a tad overpaid.

The only way the Lakers would be able to move Kennard off of the Clippers would be to attach a future first-round pick, which the Clippers would undoubtedly jump on. However, that is giving up way too much for Kennard and if the Lakers are going to trade a first, it should be in a Kyrie deal that gets Russell Westbrook out of LA.

So while Luke Kennard is the definition of a perfect target for the purple and gold, it does not appear that he will be a Laker because of the price he is going to demand. The Lakers’ only hope is that Kennard has virtually no market and the Clippers are desperate to move him.

But at that rate, the Clippers might just prefer to hang onto him and his shooting.