Lakers signing Dennis Schroder makes Westbrook trade far more likely
By Jason Reed
The Los Angeles Lakers continued to add to the roster on Friday as the team signed free-agent point guard Dennis Schroder to a one-year contract. There has been speculation around Schroder coming back to LA for quite some time and the Lakers confirmed that speculation.
Schroder is currently playing for Germany in the EuroBasket tournament and gave Lakers fans a little bit of a hint that he would be signing with LA when he dressed his daughter in a Schroder Jr. Lakers jersey.
Schroder’s first stint in Los Angeles did not go as planned but at this point, he is probably the most talented free agent on the market. That being said, it is still an interesting signing considering the team already had four point guards in Russell Westbrook, Patrick Beverley, Kendrick Nunn and Austin Reaves.
How in the world is the team going to manage the trio of Schroder, Beverley and Westbrook and make sure that everyone gets playing time and is happy? An easy way to manage that is by clearing out some of those point guard minutes.
Signing Dennis Schroder may have just confirmed a Russell Westbrook trade for the Los Angeles Lakers.
A Russell Westbrook trade has lost a lot of steam here in recent weeks but this signing has to reignite that flame. After all, this signing makes absolutely no sense if the Lakers are not planning on following it up with a Westbrook trade.
The Lakers roster is already incredibly unbalanced with way more scoring guards on the roster than anything else and adding another high-usage rate point guard to the rotation does not make a lot of sense on paper.
Trying to fit Beverley and Westbrook together was already going to be a tall ask that did not make a lot of sense. Now the Lakers have three point guards that are not that compatible with each other. Some may say that they are trying to run the three point guard lineup that Schroder was a part of with Chris Paul in OKC but that will never work with these guards.
Westbrook simply is not Chris Paul and does not have the selflessness to make that work. For that reason, you have to assume that the Lakers are playing on freeing up point guard minutes and Beverley obviously is not going to be traded.
It will be interesting to see what the team does moving forward. Schroder makes sense on this roster if Westbrook is not a part of it. If he is, it does not make much sense at all.