NBA Insider: The Los Angeles Lakers discussed trading for two All-Stars

The Los Angeles Lakers have been playing better of late but are still a couple of pieces away from actually contending in the West. The Lakers’ front office appears willing to make upgrades, but recent reports suggest that they are focusing on smaller moves instead of a blockbuster one.

However, if Los Angeles Lakers superstar LeBron James has his way, they’ll make a big trade to catapult them back into title contention. One possible trade, as reported by ESPN’s Zach Lowe on the Lowe Post podcast, could very well do that.

The rumored trade could dramatically change both teams going forward.

For the Bulls, by moving DeMar DeRozan and Nikola Vucevic, they’ll be throwing in the towel, but they are currently only 9–12 and don’t have many avenues in which to get better this season. Worse yet, DeRozan is 33 and Vucevic is 32, and this Bulls team is supposed to be in win-now mode. Instead, by continuing on as is, they may be postponing the inevitable and should strongly consider pressing the reset button.

At $48 million, Russell Westbrook’s contract is large enough to offset both DeRozan and Vucevic’s contracts. Additionally, since he’s an unrestricted free agent after this season, the Bulls could use the cleared cap space to begin retooling around All-Star Zach LaVine.

Moreover, those two lightly protected picks could help them recover from two bad trades. The first one saw them trade Wendell Carter, the pick that became Franz Wagner, and their lightly protected 2023 first to the Orlando Magic for Vucevic.

The second trade was to acquire DeRozan in a sign and trade with the Spurs, where they gave up Thaddeus Young, who was later traded for a first-round pick as well as a lightly protected 2025 selection, which will likely convey and could very well be a lottery pick. After all, it’s top 10 protected in 2025, then top 8 protected in 2026 and 2027.

That means they effectively gave the Spurs two firsts to acquire a player that they had no interest in re-signing. Ouch. It gets worse because the pick protections make it much harder for them to upgrade the roster because they can’t trade any first-rounders from 2024 to 2029 because of the Stepien rule. Those Lakers selections could prove to be lottery picks, and if a retooling with LaVine fails, they’ll need those assets.