The Los Angeles Lakers are well-known to be open to moving Russell Westbrook in the right trade. The Indiana Pacers, New York Knicks and Utah Jazz are the most recent teams to have talked with the Lakers on a deal involving Westbrook.
Those three teams are all open to bringing on Westbrook, as long as Los Angeles attaches future first-round picks in any deal. Thus far, the Lakers have reportedly held off on including more than one first-round pick in any Westbrook trade.
Indiana has roughly $30 million in cap space, which makes acquiring Westbrook an easier task for them than most other teams. The Pacers and Lakers have been linked in recent trade talks involving Buddy Hield and Myles Turner potentially headed to Los Angeles.
New York would have to send matching salary, including that of likely one or two rotation players. With the Knicks engaged in trade talks for Donovan Mitchell, it’s unclear how they would approach a Westbrook trade.
The Jazz could offer the Lakers a package of players, as they are kicking off a rebuild after trading Rudy Gobert and talking Mitchell deals. Utah can’t aggregate any of the players they acquired in the Gobert deal just yet, but those restrictions will lift in advance of training camps opening.
Leave a Reply