NBA Rumors: Lakers Opt To Stick With Westbrook Rather Than Engage In Dubious Deals

The NBA trade deadline is over and some teams hardly made any changes or at least failed to get one done.

At the top of the list are the Los Angeles Lakers and the struggles that they have been having with Russell Westbrook.

Several reports claimed that the Lakers had options on the table to possibly move the 2017 NBA MVP.

However, team executive Rob Pelinka opted to stay the course rather than risk tweaking the roster with no promise of getting better, Bill Oram of The Athletic reported.

It appears most of the offers would have seen the Lakers ending up in a worse situation.

One of them included an alleged three-team deal that would have involved the New York Knicks and the Toronto Raptors.

Among the players that would have been moved include Cam Reddish of the Knicks and the Raptors’ big men in Khem Birch and Chris Boucher.

It appears things fell apart when the Knicks and the Raptors could not agree on draft compensation.

Another option was a possible reunion with Dennis Schroder despite the notion that some members of the Lakers’ organization were reportedly against it.

Although Los Angeles continued to push for it, Boston was reportedly asking too much for the German guard.

Schroder ended up being sent to the Houston Rockets alongside Enes Kanter Freedom and Bruno Fernando as mentioned in a previous post.

The other option was ironically a player swap featuring Westbrook and John Wall of the Rockets.

While it would have made sense, the deal failed to materialize.

According to Chris Haynes of Yahoo Sports, the Rockets wanted a first-round pick included in the deal to which the Lakers declined.

Hence, all the Lakers can do now is hope to mesh with Westbrook and possibly check out the buyout market for available players.

Kanter Freedom has already been waived by the Rockets, and more are expected to follow.

LeBron James and Anthony Davis were reportedly consulted on the potential trades and understood why Pelinka opted to stand his ground, Dave McMenamin of ESPN reported.

“You can’t force another team to present yourself with a deal that is going to make your team be better. That’s up to them,” Pelinka said. “And throughout this process, we had different things we looked at and like I’ve done in the past had conversations with LeBron and Anthony about it and I would say there’s alignment here. And that’s all that matters.”