The LeBron James era has been quite the bumpy ride for the Los Angeles Lakers. The franchise of course took home the NBA championship in 2020 and are in position to potentially make another deep postseason run in the current season, but everything in between was far from stable and certain.
After the shortened 2020-21 season that began less than three months following LA's 2020 title run, the Lakers had just lost in the first round of the playoffs and had a major decision to make. Did they want to run it back with their current core once again? Or would they opt for a much riskier, potentially higher-reward option instead?
The answer, of course, is the latter. Rather than keep some of their top role players from a core that took them to a championship, the Lakers chose to bring in what they viewed as a third star to put next to Anthony Davis and LeBron James. But trading multiple players and picks for Russell Westbrook did not turn out to be all it had cracked up to be.
The Lakers sought to undo a huge misstep in 2023
The 2021-22 season ended up being an abject disaster for the Lakers, as they struggled to a 33-49 record and missed the playoffs for the second time since LeBron arrived in LA. Still not convinced they should part with Westbrook just yet and considering his massive contract, the Lakers retained him for the 2022-23 season.
At the 2023 trade deadline, Rob Pelinka and the front office orchestrated a three-team deal that sent Westbrook to the Utah Jazz and brought them back a familiar face in D'Angelo Russell. The trade was regarded as a bit of a sidestep at the time, but that may not be quite the case anymore.
The current outlook on the D'Angelo Russell trade
To determine how the D'Lo trade has aged in the nearly 14 months since it occurred, we should take a look at each individual piece of the deal and their implications. With the Lakers obviously being in win-now mode, they opted to get as many players back in the deal as possible, rather than future picks.
That is also the primary reason they were okay with giving up their 2027 first-rounder to the Jazz. In the front office's mind, if they can get themselves to another NBA Finals in the next season or two and have a chance at a championship, it will outweigh the potential value of a first-round pick four years down the road.
LA also sent their 2024 second-rounder to Minnesota. In the grand scheme of things, that is very minimal draft compensation to give up considering the return of three rotation players. Of course, the main goal of this trade for the Lakers was to get Russell Westbrook's contract off the books and try to salvage his value into anything resembling productive on-floor talent.
They can certainly say they accomplished that. Despite the fact that Malik Beasley was mostly disappointing during his time as a Laker, getting a tenacious wing defender in Vanderbilt proved to be a major boost to their playoff rotation. And as we know, the centerpiece of the return for LA was their former second-overall pick, D'Angelo Russell.
Regrading the trade
Returning to the City of Angels from Minnesota, D'Angelo Russell was thrust onto a team desperate for a playoff spot after starting the year with a terrible record. The Lakers, now knowing the error of their ways in giving away so much to get Russell Westbrook, were just hoping they got anything out of D'Lo so as not to waste the last years that LeBron James had in the NBA.
With their 2020 championship roster almost completely gone and Westbrook playing wildly inconsistent, LA was forced to retool and D'Angelo was simply the best option they had. Many were understandably skeptical of how much he would actually do for a team with so much pressure on them, but D'Lo has answered the call.
Yes, he had his moments of letdown in the 2023 playoffs, but by and large D'Angelo has provided a major lift for a Lakers team that badly needed a consistent scoring option with LeBron and AD off the floor. For a player that was cast away by the Nets, Warriors, and Timberwolves since leaving LA the first time, D'Lo has proven that he has unquestionable value as a veteran scorer.
As great of a player as Russell Westbrook is, he was simply not a good fit on this Lakers team. LA needed to move him by any means possible, and the reality is that there were far worse outcomes than this one. A nightmare scenario would have been Pelinka and company failing to find any suitors and letting him walk for nothing last summer.
Instead, the Lakers pulled off this three-team trade that essentially catapulted them to Western Conference contender status immediately. They went from likely to miss the playoffs for a second consecutive season to the Western Conference Finals in a matter of weeks, and it was this deal that has LA on the verge of sneaking into the top six in the West as we speak. With all that considered, we can consider this trade a rousing success.
Grade: A