Los Angeles Lakers NBA Trade Rumors: Team May Have Given Up on Trading Forward Luol Deng
As a holdover from the Jim Buss/Mitch Kupchak regime, veteran forward Luol Deng just doesn't fit into the Lakers' long-term plans.
Everyone knows that his days in Los Angeles are numbered, and he has already expressed his desire to leave after he fell out of the rotation early in the season. However, his contract has made him rather difficult to move and the Lakers have now realized that he's practically untradeable unless they give up draft picks or a young player to sweeten the deal.
"You talk to teams around the league, no one is bailing the Lakers out with Deng's contract. They're not. Teams have asked for multiple first-round picks. They've asked for Brandon Ingram. They'll ask for Kyle Kuzma. The Lakers have essentially given up on the idea that they can trade Deng," Adrian Wojnarowski said during an appearance on ESPN's "Full Court Press," via Lakers Outsiders.
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Well, it's interesting to note that the Lakers actually put themselves in this situation.
They had to ship former second overall pick D'Angelo Russell to the Brooklyn Nets to get rid of Timofey Mozgov and his bloated contract this past summer, and now teams are asking them to give up a similar package for Deng.
The Lakers can't possibly give up an up-and-coming player like Ingram or Kuzma. Trading away a draft pick is just as costly as well because they are supposed to building towards the future. This puts them in a bind.
"With Deng out of the rotation and unlikely to play another game for the Lakers, it's unlikely that the team could resuscitate Deng's trade value in any way," Harrison Faigen said in his column for Lakers Nation.
If the Lakers can't dump his salary elsewhere, the only option they have left is to waive him and use the stretch provision on the remaining two years of his contract.
