The NBA offseason has been a wild one thus far and the biggest domino has not yet fallen as Kevin Durant is still a member of the Brooklyn Nets. Once Durant is traded, the hope for the Los Angeles Lakers is that a Kyrie Irving trade for Russell Westbrook will be right around the corner.
That is not the only trade that the Lakers could make this offseason as they have a young asset in Talen Horton-Tucker. The Lakers have tried trading THT before and with the recent crop of free-agent signings, it is a lot easier to trade THT than it was before.
While a lot still has to shake out, we have a better idea now than we did before about which teams are going to be buyers and which teams are going to be sellers. With that information in mind, there are some THT trade packages that now make perfect sense for the Lakers and their trade partner.
3 Talen Horton-Tucker trade packages that now make perfect sense for the Lakers:
1. Capitalizing on the Spurs’ tanking
The San Antonio Spurs entered the Victor Wembanyama tanking sweepstakes next season when they traded Dejounte Murray for Danilo Gallinari and future first-round picks. San Antonio essentially did not get any talent in return as the team quickly bought out Gallo following the trade.
The Spurs should now be in the business of trading any of the assets they have for younger players that they can hope to develop in Gregg Popovich’s last season. They have a movable contract in Josh Richardson that is going to be hard to trade to a contender.
Richardson has a tradeable salary but typically it is packaged in a larger deal for a bigger player. That obviously is not going to happen unless the Spurs take on a salary-dump trade, so it might make more sense for the Spurs to simply flip one year of Richardson for a young player like THT.
For the Lakers, they get a wing that can defend and be an off-ball shooter. While Richardson has struggled at points in recent seasons, he is still only 28 years old and the best version of him is a perfect role player for the Lakers.