The Los Angeles Lakers clearly need to make an upgrade to the roster, but without a trade their options are limited.
The Lakers have several needs they to address, primarily perimeter defense and outside shooting but they could also use more size in the frontcourt with Anthony Davis out. It sounds like they’re trying to fix the latter as they reportedly have workouts set up for DeMarcus Cousins and Meyers Leonard.
While Darvin Ham couldn’t confirm the workouts, he did admit the organization is looking at every which way to add talent.
“I can’t really confirm or deny that,” Ham said. “I know we live in a day and age where everything gets leaked. But at the end of the day, I’ve said this time and time again, it would be irresponsible for us not to see what’s out there just in general terms with anybody. You saw recently we brought in Tyler Dorsey and Sterling Brown, who we ended up signing. But at the end of the day, we’re constantly looking at what’s out there and just being aware. That doesn’t mean people are gonna make our roster.
“And for me specifically, I have a job to do for those guys that are in that locker room in uniform to extract whatever I can out of them in a positive manner, a highly positive manner, and I think we’ve been trending here lately in a great direction. I’ll let the other departments in our organization do their due diligence but we’re focused on trying to win a game tonight.”
Ham added he couldn’t confirm anything because things can always fall through.
“It’s just one of those things where you don’t know, until a person is actually here in your gym, anything can go. For me to come out and say ‘yeah, this guy is here’ and then some other team calls and then they’re not available, at the end of the day I don’t want to be going back and forth about things that are traditionally NBA steps that we take in order to improve the roster because again, my staff and I are trying to get our heads above water with the guys we have in the locker room.”
Davis is expected to miss a couple more weeks as he ramps up his rehab, so bringing in another body makes sense. While it can be argued that players like Cousins and Leonard shouldn’t be their focus, at least L.A. is aware enough to seek help somewhere.
Darvin Ham says he’ll definitely look at LeBron James, Anthony Davis, Thomas Bryant frontcourt
Since Davis has gone down, Thomas Bryant has taken a bigger role on the team and run with it. Even when Davis does return, Bryant has earned more minutes and Ham revealed he is looking forward to playing those two alongside LeBron James in the frontcourt.
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