At the end of last season, LeBron James and the Los Angeles Lakers went out sad, missing out on the Play-In Tournament entirely. The Russell Westbrook experiment failed, and it was clear something needed to change.
In turn, the offseason discourse surrounding the team was all about what they could do to improve. Yet somehow, the chatter surrounding the Lakers this summer is even wilder.
Despite making an impressive run to the Western Conference finals, the Lakers still sit in a pool of uncertainty. James spoke about the idea of retirement, the Lakers have free-agency decisions to make, and Kyrie Irving is trying to recruit James to the Dallas Mavericks.
The latter of those three topics has swept the NBA world in recent days, as the Mavericks don’t have anywhere close to a good enough trade package to send the Lakers in exchange for James.
Any deal that would ship James to Dallas would see something like Tim Hardaway Jr., Davis Bertans, Josh Green, Jaden Hardy, and draft picks sent to Los Angeles.
That’s not good enough.
5 LeBron James trades that would actually make sense for the Los Angeles Lakers
In all likelihood, James will be back in the purple and gold next season, trying to help the Lakers win their 18th championship. But what if he wasn’t?
Since Irving thinks the Mavericks have a chance to land James in a trade, why not take a look at some other potential trades for the Lakers superstar?
To make things perfectly clear, the chances of any of these trades actually happening is close to zero, but since Irving broached the subject, let’s play into it.
Here are five James trades that would make more sense for the Lakers than a Mavericks deal.