The Los Angeles Lakers gave up a lot to get Walker Kessler. Rob Pelinka surrendered two unprotected first-round picks in 2031 and 2033, plus two first-round pick swaps in 2028 and 2030. The argument is not that Kessler's price tag was not worth it — it will be — but the Lakers have certainly restricted just how active they can be on the trade market for notable upgrades from here.
Luguentz Dort's trade from the Oklahoma City Thunder to the Atlanta Hawks serves as a great example of that. The Lakers were in on Dort. According to Michael Scotto, they were one of several teams confirmed to have contacted Sam Presti about the former NBA champion.
"Several teams expressed trade interest in acquiring Dort before he was traded to Atlanta, including the Los Angeles Lakers, Brooklyn Nets, Toronto Raptors, and Miami Heat, league sources told HoopsHype."
The Lakers did not have the assets to tempt a Western Conference rival into keeping Dort close by. For Los Angeles, you take Kessler over him 10 out of 10 times. Plus, the Canadian hooper, in particular, is someone they can circle back to in next year's free agency. However, the overall situation serves as a great example of the type of constraints Pelinka will have to work with from here.
Walker Kessler sign-and-trade makes Lakers' future trade negotations difficult
This is not all to say the Lakers are without means to do trades altogether. However, they will inevitably have a harder time making the splashier acquisitions through those means.
The Lakers are pretty pinned down when it comes to the core of their team. The types of moves they will be able to land on the trade market will be fringe rotation additions at best.
Eventually, the new signings the Lakers made will become tradeable themselves. That means if someone is not quite working out in the way Los Angeles had hoped, they can attempt to ship them off elsewhere and gauge their value in negotiations with other teams.
Even then, if the Lakers are attempting to pivot one of those players into an upgrade, the draft capital they can attach to execute a deal of that sorts is naturally slim. They will largely be forced to bank on the individual value of the players alone.
Kessler should more than prove to be the type of center who can stabilize the Lakers moving forward, rewarding their steep commitment tenfold. However, for a team who is attempting to win now with Luka Doncic, they will be limited in the opportunism they can have to improve the title odds from here.
Whether the Thunder wing was worth a first-round pick to begin with is another discussion. The fact of the matter here is that the failed Dort trade highlighted the challenges of making trades from here onward.
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