The Los Angeles Lakers are a team that is looking to capitalize on having two superstars to build a roster that is good enough to at least have a chance of making a run in the playoffs. The Detroit Pistons are a young team that is looking to get the best draft pick possible and has veteran assets to trade.
Naturally, the two teams become logical candidates to make a trade with each other and there has certainly been speculation around the two teams. Most of that speculation is around Bojan Bogdanovic, but because of his price, those talks seemed to be dead.
However, as is often the case in the NBA, the story could be changing. According to Chris Mannix and Howard Beck of Sports Illustrated, the Lakers and Pistons have discussed a trade involving both Bojan Bogdanovic and Nerlens Noel. That definitely changes the tune of what could be possible with these two teams.
What a Lakers-Pistons trade with Nerlens Noel could look like:
The only way including Nerlens Noel makes sense is if the Lakers are doing a larger Russell Westbrook trade. Because of the league’s rules around trades, the Lakers would either have to include Lonnie Walker IV or trade five players for Bogdanovic and Noel to make the money work.
Los Angeles probably is not doing either of those things. The team really likes Walker and it would be killing its depth by trading five players. Thus, if there were discussions around Noel, perhaps it was something bigger — a Westbrook deal.
This is a lot to digest and the initial reaction from both fanbases is probably vitriol. On the following pages, we will break down why each team could say yes (not arguing that they definitely should).