Spurs should be kicking themselves after rejecting Lakers’ Westbrook trade
By Jason Reed
The Los Angeles Lakers tried trading Russell Westbrook all season and to no avail. A deal was never made and Westbrook rolled into the 2022-23 season getting a big payday looking to prove the doubters wrong.
Now, over a month into the 2022-23 season, it is probably a good thing that the Lakers did not make a Westbrook trade. While Westbrook has been far from perfect, he actually hasn’t been the problem for the Lakers this season. Trading him for some of the reported packages, with two first-round picks, would not have been great. Los Angeles would have traded future draft capital and would not have truly raised the ceiling that much in the process.
If the Lakers were able to trade Westbrook for just one pick — especially if it had protections — then it would have been a good move. No other team wanted to make that move, which includes the San Antonio Spurs.
According to Michael Scotto of Hoops Hype, the Lakers offered the Spurs a trade revolved around Westbrook, Josh Richardson and Doug McDermott. San Antonio rejected the trade as the incoming draft value with Westbrook was not enough.
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— Paul Garcia (@PaulGarciaNBA) November 21, 2022
While Spurs fans might be okay with their team not taking this deal, the reality of the situation is that San Antonio should probably be regretting its decision to not take the offer when they had the chance.
The Spurs should regret not taking this Lakers trade for Russell Westbrook.
Why should the Spurs regret this? Simple. The team is not going to get another offer to take on Westbrook this season, losing their only chance of adding draft capital for essentially nothing. Now, the Spurs are stuck with Richardson and McDermott and don’t really have much to do with them.
Richardson and McDermott would have added three-point shooting to Los Angeles, which would have been valuable, but their overall contributions as role players have been less than ideal. Some optimistic Spurs fans might think that the team can flip Richardson and/or McDermott for more than just a protected pick but that is likely not the case.
The duo has simply been inefficient this season. There have been 212 players in the league this season to log at least 300 minutes played. Of those 212, Richardson and McDermott rank 208th and 207th, respectively. The Spurs are not getting much for two role players who thus far, have been among the six worst players in the league by advanced statistics.
Heck, just look at the recent trades that Richardson was involved in. After being a disappointment for the Dallas Mavericks, Richardson was essentially given away to the Boston Celtics. Then he was a filler contract in the Derrick White trade to make the money work. He is not going to warrant a first-round pick in a trade. This was the Spurs’ one chance to get that.
The same can be said for McDermott. In fact, there is added value here for the Spurs by trading him. While they take on more money this season, they would be getting McDermott’s salary off the books for next season. That has immense value, especially when no other team is likely going to do the same for McDermott’s contract.
At the end of the day, it is not going to change the course of the Spurs franchise that they rejected this deal. However, they definitely did not maximize what they could have gotten for these role players as the Lakers were the only team in town that was interested and willing to send draft capital.
If one of the two is traded for more than a second-round pick I will eat crow but that is very unlikely.