Since winning the 2020 NBA championship, the Los Angeles Lakers have never been truly close to contending. Yes, they reached the Western Conference Finals in 2023, but they got swept by eventual champion Denver Nuggets.
With no significant changes in their lineup, it’s hard to bet on the Lakers to make a deep playoff run in the Western Conference, which has greatly improved this offseason.
If the Lakers’ season goes south and blowing it up is the only logical choice to start a full-scale rebuild under first-time head coach JJ Redick, Sports Illustrated’s Alex Kirschenbaum proposed a trade to sell high on Davis before his skills get diminished by age and injuries.
Los Angeles Lakers receive: Brandon Ingram, Jordan Hawkins, 4 first-round picks, 1 first-round pick swap
New Orleans Pelicans receive: Anthony Davis
“Yes, it’s an asset-depreciated reversal of L.A.’s original deal to acquire Davis from the team that drafted him in 2019,” Kirschenbaum wrote.
However, for the Lakers, extracting maximum value out of Davis, who is already in his 30s, should be their M.O. to launch a full-scale rebuild.
A trade going back to the Pelicans gives Davis his redemption shot at re-writing his legacy in the team that drafted him, similar to what LeBron James did in Cleveland after winning in Miami.
A Davis-Zion Williamson surrounded by two-way players and plenty of shooting has the makings of a championship contender the Lakers will never be under their current makeup.
Getting Ingram, their former No. 2 pick, could go both ways for the Lakers — either he is a place-holder while they look for their next star or get flipped for more future assets down the road.
The Lakers can choose from the five-round picks the Pelicans have (their own 2025, 2029 and 2031 and Milwaukee Bucks’ 2025 and 2027).
JJ Redick Reveals Lakers Starters
Redick is not keeping his opening night plan for the Lakers secret.
In an interview with the recently fired Zach Lowe in what turned out to be the last episode of ESPN’s “The Lowe Post” podcast, Redick revealed his starting lineup to open the season.
“Yeah, it’ll be the starting five that went 23-10 last year,” Redick told Lowe on September 25.
Redick was referring to the starting lineup of D’Angelo Russell, Austin Reaves, Rui Hachimura, James and Davis.
While this five-man group makes the perfect sense in terms of offense, their lack of perimeter and point-of-attack defense exposed them in their playoff loss to the Nuggets for the second straight postseason.
Former Laker Puts Pressure on Rui Hachimura
Under their erstwhile coach Darvin Ham last season, Hachimura was very vocal that he should been part of the starting lineup from the start.
“I’ve been telling them, like, this is who we are,” Hachimura said on Feb. 14. “We’ve been trying a lot of different things, some lineups and all this stuff, but this is the lineup we had in the playoffs and that’s how we won, so it’s simple. … It’s just that we know, we’re just really comfortable playing each other.”
With Hachimura set to get his wish under the Lakers’ new head coach, former Lakers guard Patrick Beverley, now playing in Israel, puts pressure on the Japanese forward to produce more.
“Rui, he a good basketball player, but he’s not the X-factor to me,” Beverley said on the “Pat Bev Pod” on September 23. “Actually, you know what, he should be the X-factor because he gets paid as the X-factor should be. So yeah, [expletive], we go put him X-factor. He needs to do more, he needs to do more.”
“He has to come in like, ‘I’m the second option.’ His mindset has to be, yeah, it’s AD here, it’s LeBron here, it’s Austin Reaves here, it’s D’Lo here, but no, AD getting it, I’m the second option. That has to be his mindset, you know? Because they do need that.”
Despite not getting the starting job right away, Hachimura finished strong, averaging a career-high 13.6 points on 53.7% field goal shooting and 42.2% from the 3-point line in his first full season with the Lakers.