The Los Angeles Lakers find themselves at the center of a new trade rumor seemingly every day. It comes with the territory of being both the Lakers and a team that has LeBron James on it, but despite the fact that they’ve been mentioned as a potential landing spot for a number of players dating back to this offseason, L.A. has not pulled the trigger on a major move to overhaul its roster.
The latest example of this came on the most recent episode of The Lowe Post, where ESPN’s Zach Lowe mentioned that a popular trade going around the Twitterverse involves the Lakers sending Russell Westbrook to the Chicago Bulls, along with the team’s 2027 and 2029 first-round NBA Draft picks, for DeMar DeRozan and Nikola Vucevic. As Lowe said, the Laker front office has discussed this, although he made clear that this is something “any responsible team” has to do.
“I can tell you 100 percent for sure the Lakers have had internal discussions about that very possibility (trading for DeRozan and Vučević) if it would ever come up,” Lowe said, per Rob Schaefer of NBC Sports Chicago. “Not that they (the Lakers) would do it, let me be clear. Just, you look around the league, like any responsible team would.”
It is worth mentioning that the Lakers’ decision to acquire Westbrook last offseason came at the expense of DeRozan, who has said that he was led to believe he was on his way to Los Angeles in the summer of 2021 before the team opted to pull off a trade for Westbrook.