It may be trite to think of all the moves a team could have made or almost made. Of course, hindsight is 20-20 and it's easy to criticize a front office for things that they should have done when, years down the line, it becomes obvious that they should have taken the risk.
But the Lakers' trade — then un-trade — for Mark Williams is different because, well, they did make the move. The trade was done. The "welcome" tweets were sent. The "we're really getting this demon" highlight packages were making the rounds. It appeared the Lakers had their answer at center... Until Williams failed a physical, causing the deal to be rescinded.
About one calendar year later, the Lakers really shouldn't have rescinded that deal. Williams has been great for the upstart Suns, while the Lakers have been begging Deandre Ayton to string together three good games all year long while Jaxson Hayes assaults mascots.
Lakers second-guessed a great trade for Mark Williams
There's debate about whether the Hornets tried to sell the Lakers a lemon or if the Lakers pretended to trade for Williams to appease their (then) new superstar Luka Doncic only to rescind the trade because of some scary medicals from the center.
I don't know the truth — I do believe that Williams' physical concerned the Lakers, though, as he had never played more than 45 games in a season before this year.
With that being said, Williams has played 50 of the Suns' 55 games this year. That's about as healthy as you can ask for! He's been the exact type of player the Lakers wished Deandre Ayton was going to be too. While their raw statistical profiles are relatively similar, the eye test and advanced stats show how much better Williams has been than Ayton this year (a 0.3 vs. 1.4 VORP, for instance).
I'm not saying the Lakers should have taken on a player who they believed was in danger of serious injuries in the future. But trading for Williams in the first place came with risks — he was already tagged as "injury prone" before he took his physical in LA — so it was weird that the Lakers traded for a notoriously injured player, then un-traded him when they found out he's at risk to get injured.
For the time being, it appears like the Lakers talked themselves out of a trade that would have solved one of their biggest problems.