While there hasn’t been a shortage of Lakers trade rumors in light of the team’s lackluster start, there has been a lack of logic amongst fans and writers when it comes to either potential trading partners or targets. As a result, I’ve created a checklist that you’re welcome to use as a reference before believing all those Chris Broussard rumors he likes to attribute to “sources close to the situation” or before sending your trade ideas to either your friends or your favorite writers.
Teams Don’t Want Your Player For The Same Reason You Want To See Him Traded
This is very important and yet seems to be the most forgotten rule when it comes to fans and their trade fantasies. You think Devin Ebanks sucks? Guess what? There’s a good chance that most GMs do too. Ebanks will only be included in a trade if his salary is needed to make it happen. In other words, please stop sending me trade ideas that involve Ebanks being traded straight up for anyone good.
It should also be noted that Ebanks and Darius Morris, who both signed one year deals this past summer, would have to approve any trade because they’d be surrendering their Bird Rights (For more information on this, read Larry Coon’s CBA FAQ #97).
However, exceptions can be made for players who actually have talent, like Pau Gasol. Let’s say you want to see Pau Gasol traded. If it’s because you think he’s washed up, take that into consideration. Don’t tell me he stinks and in the same breath tell me the Lakers should trade him for Chris Bosh. There’s about a zero percent chance that you know something about a player that every GM doesn’t already know.
Teams Who Are Rebuilding Don’t Want Your Trash Unless It Can Help Them
I know Gasol isn’t exactly trash but this is a big one in light of the fact he only has one guaranteed year left on his deal. Just ask yourself, who would trade for the right to pay Gasol $19.3 million in 2013-14 and why?
There aren’t a lot of possibilities as to why a team would trade for Pau. Perhaps a team thinks he could make them a contender and would consider re-signing him when he becomes a free agent after next season. Maybe they’re looking to accelerate a rebuilding plan by moving contracts expiring after his. Or maybe they would acquire him with the plan to trade him again once his value increases.
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If a team like the Atlanta Hawks is on pace to have a large amount of cap space next summer, would they forfeit the cap space to acquire Dwight Howard long-term by acquiring someone like Pau, who is not only expensive, but will also turn 33 before the start of next season?
If you can’t answer yes to any of those questions, you should probably go back to the drawing board.
Conference Rivals Rarely Make Trades With Each Other
This is one that doesn’t get taken into consideration nearly as much as it should. The Lakers and Suns have made nine trades in the last 40 years and only four of those were made after 1976. The Steve Nash trade was really just a favor so that Nash wouldn’t be far from his kids who still live in Phoenix. So don’t anticipate the two sides making another deal for quite some time. In other words, Marcin Gortat will not be a Laker any time soon.
Three names that Lakers fans love to tell me they should be targeting are LaMarcus Aldridge, Paul Millsap, and DeMarcus Cousins. Cool story, bros. The Lakers and Blazers haven’t made a trade since October 8, 1980. The last time the Lakers and Jazz made a trade was October 25, 1979 — four months after they drafted Magic Johnson. And the last time the Lakers and Kings made a trade the Kings were still in Kansas City.
Get the point?
Next Page: Multi-Team Trades & Importance of Draft Picks
Whenever someone sends me a Trade Machine link with a three or four-team trade, I immediately take it as serious as acquiring cooties. Sure they’re fun to ponder but they rarely ever happen.
I didn’t say they never happen because occasionally they do. I’m just saying they don’t happen often because they’re extremely difficult to pull off. It’s usually because a team that has to relinquish four or five players in order to get salaries to match up would then have to find ways to fill out the remainder of their roster in the middle of a season. Likewise, the team that inherits the four or five players would then have to release players to get under the 15-man maximum. If you have to release a guy, you still have to pay him if his contract is guaranteed. For a team over the luxury tax, such as the Lakers, paying so much for guys to either not play for them or to play for someone else is something that teams over the luxury tax threshold will always try to avoid.
For example, two teams often mentioned in Gasol trade rumors are the Rockets and Wolves. Pau is making $19 million this season. The Rockets three highest paid players are Jeremy Lin and Omer Asik (both making about $8.4 million) and James Harden ($5.8 million in the last year of his rookie contract. His new deal begins next season). Presumably, the Lakers aren’t interested in trading for Asik or Lin and Harden is untouchable.
The next six highest-paid Rockets make less than $15 million combined. Without taking back Lin, Asik, or Harden, the Lakers would have to take back at least five Rockets in order for a Gasol trade to work. That also means it would be difficult for the Lakers to send Houston another player along with Pau. The Lakers would end up with a 19-man roster after the trade and would have to pay the four guys they’d be forced to waive.
Similar story with Minnesota. Kevin Love is not available. At least not yet. I’m guessing the Lakers aren’t interested in Brandon Roy or Andrei Kirilenko. That means the next easiest trade for the Lakers would have them taking back upcoming free agent Nikola Pekovic, draft flop Derrick Williams, and two more years of JJ Barea. That isn’t much of a package without a draft pick or two.
It’s not just with trades involving Gasol. Reports came out this week that the Lakers were interested in trading for José Calderon, the Raptors’ highest-paid player. Since we know the Lakers aren’t trading Steve Nash and the Raptors don’t want Metta World Peace, the only possible trades would either be the injured Steve Blake and Jordan Hill or either Blake or Hill along with Chris Duhon and either Jodie Meeks, Earl Clark, or Devin Ebanks. I can’t see the Lakers moving Hill without getting the Raptors to also take back Blake and Duhon. I’m not sold that the Raptors would do that anyway. Why would they?
I know that the Raptors will do everything they can to try and move Calderon before the deadline. I’ve maintained since before the season started that the Lakers only realistic chance at acquiring him is if the Raptors can’t trade him and decide to buy him out. The problem is that Calderon has been fantastic in the games in which he’s started in place of the injured Kyle Lowry. In only 12 games as a starter, Calderon has already registered games of 10, 11, 12, 14, 15, 17, 17, and 18 assists.
With every game that Lowry misses, the chances of the Raptors finding a taker for Calderon via trade grow more and more likely and the chances of the Raptors moving him without getting back a first-round pick become less and less likely.
And that’s because…
Draft Picks Matter
The earliest first-round pick the Lakers can include in a trade is in 2019. Depending on how they finish, their first round pick in this year’s draft belongs to either Cleveland or to Phoenix. They’ve already traded away their 2015 and 2017 picks. Since the NBA forbids teams from trading away first-round picks in consecutive drafts, the Lakers can’t include their 2014 or 2016 pick in any trades and they won’t be able to trade their 2018 pick until after the 2017 Draft is over.
In other words, the Lakers would probably want to get back a future first-round pick (or two) from a team willing to trade for Pau. There are some teams who don’t have first round picks in this year’s draft and therefore can’t move their 2014 pick until the 2013 draft is over. Is there another Laker on the team besides Pau that not only would the Lakers consider trading, but could also bring them back a first-round pick in a trade? Pau quite possibly represents the Lakers only realistic asset for acquiring a first round pick.
Houston owes Atlanta a lottery-protected first-round pick in next year’s draft. Even though Houston will most likely keep their pick, they’re not allowed to trade it until it’s fate has been determined. However, Atlanta is allowed to trade the pick along with it’s conditions.
For the purposes of this discussion, every Lakers fan I know wants nothing to do with Carlos Boozer. But if the Lakers could trade Pau for Boozer, a future Bulls first-round pick and/or the conditional first-round pick the Bobcats owe the Bulls from the Tyrus Thomas trade, would that make you more willing to trade the year-and-change left on Gasol’s deal for the two-and-change left on Boozer’s?
Just something to think about.
Next Page: Increased Luxury Tax Presents Problems
This is one of those things that people love to bring up when throwing trade ideas at me. They think because a guy played high school ball or grew up in a particular city, or because a guy and one of the team’s assistant coaches happened to graduate from the same college 20 years apart, that a trade idea makes more sense. One of my Twitter followers loves to tell me that the Lakers should trade for Brandon Jennings because he is from Compton. I don’t hate Brandon Jennings but what does that have to do with anything?
New Luxury Tax Penalties Are No Joke
Next season is the first in which greater luxury tax penalties go into effect. The season after that, the 2014-15 season, the penalties get even more serious. Not every team has the resources like the Lakers or Knicks have when it comes to paying penalties. Even the Knicks were hesitant to match the offer sheet the Rockets gave to Jeremy Lin because of how much it would cost in it’s final season. The Lakers refrained from signing Leandro Barbosa before the season because they didn’t want to have to pay a player they would have to release to create a roster spot.
Acquiring a player making $19.3 million is something that could handcuff a team and prevent them from making any other future moves. Only teams with enough salary coming off their books, either in the trade to acquire the player or in contracts that expire after this current season, would consider making a play for someone like Pau Gasol. This would probably eliminate most small market teams and any team that wants to have cap space this coming summer. The Utah Jazz are currently $3 million below the luxury tax threshold. You can be sure that they wouldn’t make any deal that would put them in danger of going over.
The Milwaukee Bucks, on the other hand, have about $18 million in just the expiring contracts of Beno Udrih, Samuel Dalembert, and Mike Dunleavey. They also have potential free agent Brandon Jennings. Monta Ellis also has an early termination option on the final year of his contract. Given next summer’s weak free agent class, the Bucks might be willing to trade Ellis for Gasol if the Lakers were willing to take back one of the Bucks more undesirable contracts, like Ersan Ilyasova’s newly-signed 5-year, $45 million deal or the remaining two years and $13.4 million left on Drew Gooden’s contract.
No One Is In A Rush To Help The Lakers
I know fans of other teams might disagree with this but it’s the truth. During the Lakers’ three-peat from 2000-02, the team only pulled off one significant trade and that was the four-team trade that sent Glen Rice to the Knicks and brought back Horace Grant. The other two trades just swapped out meaningless draft picks and bench guys like Tracy Murray and Lindsey Hunter. During the back-to-back titles in 2009 and 2010, the only meaningful trade they made was the cost-cutting one that sent Sasha Vujacic to the Nets for Joe Smith’s expiring contract.
When the Lakers have been able to pull off significant trades, it’s because they have the assets that other teams were looking for. The Lakers pulled of the Pau Gasol trade because they had the right combination of draft picks, Kwame Brown’s large expiring contract, and the drft rights to Paus’ brother, Marc. When they acquired Steve Nash they had a trade exception that allowed the Suns to sign-and-trade him without having to take back salary. When they made the Dwight Howard trade they also happened to have the league’s second-best center.
That hasn’t stopped Lakers fans from thinking that just because they want Ryan Anderson the Hornets must be in a rush to trade him to the Lakers for a dozen pairs of sneakers and two Laker Girls.
The difference between the big trades of the past and now is the lack of assets the Lakers have. Teams are enjoying watching them struggle and you can’t really blame them. This teams has had more head coaches this season than most teams have had playoff series wins in the last 10 years. So if the guy you were hoping the Lakers would get ends up going to another team for less than what the Lakers reportedly offered, it’s probably because the last thing any GM wants to be known for is being the guy who handed the Lakers another championship.
I’m not saying that I don’t want any of you to send me your trade ideas or ask how I feel about a rumor. I’m just saying there are a few things to consider before you hit send and waste either your time or mine.