The Los Angeles Lakers have the foundation to be a contending basketball team, the front office just has to commit to building on that foundation. LeBron James and Anthony Davis still make up the best duo in the league and the team is still well within striking distance of being a top-four team in the Western Conference.
That is what makes the trade deadline so important for the Lake Show this season. This is the front office’s one chance to make a sweeping change that improves the team’s title odds this season. If nothing is done, the Lakers will likely just end up falling short.
There have been several players on Lakers fans’ wish list at the deadline with some familiar faces as well. At one point it looked like Kyle Kuzma was a possibility until he ultimately wasn’t. Then there was some speculation that an Alex Caruso trade could be possible if the Bulls continued to go down a bad path.
That dream scenario — of Alex Caruso returning to the Lakers — does not appear to be possible any longer. Joe Cowley of the Chicago Sun-Times penned an excellent piece on Caruso, breaking down how the former Laker is not only not on the trade block but is “Bulls’ culture”.
A Caruso trade does not seem impossible but the Bulls are still essentially making it clear that they have no plans to move on from him yet.
The Bulls have reportedly set the asking price for Alex Caruso so high that other teams are now considering him to basically be “untouchable” pic.twitter.com/SCpKLm05vD
— Barstool Chicago (@barstoolchicago) January 29, 2023
The Lakers still have other trade options without Alex Caruso.
Despite the team not having many assets to trade, the Los Angeles Lakers still have a few different paths they could go down. Someone like Mo Bamba could be an intriguing trade target and there is always the possibility of a Russell Westbrook trade.
Los Angeles may not get a mega star in return but the team still has solid options to explore even with Caruso not being one of them. It all is going to boil down to ownership’s willingness to make a trade that can capitalize on the team’s title window.
Seeing Caruso back in the purple and gold would have been excellent. After all, he and LeBron James had the best net rating of any two-man lineup in the entire sport in 2019-20. Getting that back next to LeBron certainly would have made him happy.
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But at the end of the day, you cannot trade for a player if the other team does not want to trade them in the first place. Los Angeles needs to pivot and needs to do so quickly as time is ticking until the trade deadline.