NBA rumors: Anthony Davis' Lakers trade desires doused with cold water
01/27/2025 02:43 PM
The NBA trade deadline is quickly approaching and some of the leaves most marquee franchises are right at the center of trade discussions. Of course, the Miami Heat have been leading the trade headlines due to Jimmy Butler’s trade request, but Los Angeles Lakers star Anthony Davis also urged the Lakers to trade for a center so he could spend more time at the four.
As a result, a couple of natural trade targets popped up. Chicago Bulls center Nikola Vucevic, Toronto Raptors center Jakob Poeltl and Utah Jazz center Walker Kessler have all been floated in trade discussions around the league. Naturally, all three generated Lakers buzz after Davis’ request.
Now, however, it looks like those deals may not work out for the Lakers. The asking prices from the other teams aren’t adding up, and it wouldn’t make sense for the Lakers to sacrifice a large part of their future for these specific deals.
At this point, the Lakers have been unwilling to part ways with those valuable draft picks and other key assets that would interest a rebuilding team such as the Bulls or the Raptors. Specifically, Vucevic and Poeltl are two players the Lakers will likely stray away from due to the asking price associated with each player, according to NBA insider Marc Stein.
Despite the differences in what each team wants going back from the Lakers in a trade, Los Angeles has inquired about Vucevic’s availability and has shown interest in him as an option at the trade deadline, according to Brett Siegel of ClutchPoints.
It seems like it will also be difficult for the Lakers to swing a deal for Kessler, who is “believed to be as close to unavailable as it gets with less than 10 days to go before the trade deadline,” per Stein.
As a result, the Lakers will likely have to keep chugging along like they have been in the front court, which may not be such a bad thing given their recent results. JJ Redick and company have won three games in a row and are up to 25-18 on the season, which is good for fifth place in the Western Conference. While a lot of the other talented teams in the West have struggled with inconsistency this season, the Lakers have been able to rise above that and put themselves in a good position heading into the second half of the season.
The Lakers have already made one key trade this season when they acquired Dorian Finney-Smith from the Brooklyn Nets for a package including D’Angelo Russell. That move has given the lakers more flexibility on defense and allowed LeBron James and Austin Reaves to handle more of the ball handling duties, so the move has worked wonders for the team so far.
The post NBA rumors: Anthony Davis’ Lakers trade desires doused with cold water appeared first on ClutchPoints.
