Aloha
One thing that hasn’t been talked about is cap flexibility. The Lakers have went out of their way to maintain flexibility for next year. Now a trade for Kyrie, even if they had to bring back Harris makes sense because that trade could elevate them to contender status. But some of the other options like Buddy may not. Nobody is going to trade expiring deals to the Lakers. Teams that trade for Russ will want to dump long term contracts. Which could mess with that flexibility and make it harder to sign even Kyrie as a free agent next summer. So I’m thinking the Lakers will really examine if a trade gives them a real shot at contention before trading Russ just to trade him.
Yup. There are worse scenarios the. Just letting Russ and his deal expire and free up the resource.