The Los Angeles Lakers traded for Dorian Finney-Smith last year, sending D'Angelo Russell and three second-round picks to the Nets for the forward's expiring contract. After the way Finney-Smith played in the second half of the season, fans wanted to see him re-sign with LA, but the Rockets swooped in, signing him to a four-year, $53 million deal. Fans don't feel the same way about that move now as they did then.
Finney-Smith didn't make his Houston debut until Dec. 25 against Los Angeles after undergoing ankle surgery in the offseason. He's played 20 games this season, averaging a career-low 2.9 points and 2.4 rebounds in only 15.8 minutes per game, shooting 29.9% from the field and 24.5% from three.
The 32-year-old hasn't scored at all in double-digits this season. He was on a minutes restriction, but on Tuesday, he played a season-high 20 minutes and had only three points on 1-of-2 shooting from the field. In the four games Finney-Smith has played this month, he's scored a combined 12 points.
Houston sits No. 4 in the West with a 33-20 record, one game back from No. 3 Denver, and 4.5 games behind No. 2 San Antonio. The whole reason that the Rockets, who finished with the second-best record in the West last season, signed DFS was to help them get closer to a championship after they traded for Kevin Durant. By no means are they in a bad position, but Finney-Smith has been a complete non-factor.
Lakers luckily let Dorian Finney-Smith go to Rockets
Now, this doesn't mean that Rob Pelinka knew that DFS would have a dud of a first season in Houston. He did undergo surgery in June, so the Lakers were well-aware of that, but even then, the expectation was that Finney-Smith would recover in time for training camp.
Los Angeles' mission has been to create and preserve future financial flexibility, and as ESPN's Dave McMenamin reported over the summer, that played a role in the Lakers' negotiations with Finney-Smith. It wasn't a priority for them to keep one of Luka Dončić's former Mavericks teammates around.
No, it wasn't a smart move to trade three second-round picks to Brooklyn for a half-season rental of Finney-Smith only to lose him for nothing. That was mismanagement on the front office's part, but it would've been worse if LA had re-signed him. The Lakers wouldn't have been able to turn around and flip him before the deadline, at least not for anything good in return.
There is still time for DFS to start to turn things around in Houston, but Rockets fans don't have a lot of hope in that happening, not after the way he's been playing. The Lakers got lucky without realizing it.