According to Bovada.net, the Los Angeles Lakers are the odds-on favorite to land LeBron James as he decides on his free agency plans this summer. If he chooses L.A. but under the condition that LaVar (er, I mean Lonzo) Ball is traded away first, should the Phoenix Suns swing a trade for the point guard?
In a recent interview, LaVar Ball said that LeBron James could not teach Lonzo Ball anything, and that Lonzo would only make LeBron James better.
It is not hard to believe the LaVar would make such a statement, but in case you really want to hear the interview for yourself, you can check it out here.
If LeBron James does see the Los Angeles Lakers as his next stop, he very well may want LaVar Ball completely out of the picture, and demand that Magic Johnson trade Lonzo away so that ‘Bron can enter the Lakers without the bombastic elder Ball taking credit, undermining, or otherwise disrupting James’ attempt at stealing championship glory away from the Golden State Warriors.
Unless you are a huge Brandon Knight fan (or at least want to give him a chance), the Phoenix Suns are in need of a starting point guard.
They can certainly find veteran talent in trade or free agency to fill the void until a long-term solution is found, and there is a a chance that they swing a trade during the draft to land a rookie point guard, someone who can be groomed behind Knight for a year or two and then eventually take over the mantle as the team’s long-term starter.
However, none of those players are likely to be as good as Lonzo Ball.
Ball is not a savior point guard by any means, but he is pretty daggone good. The early draft comparisons to Jason Kidd are both sound and still fair, and his final rookie stat line of 10.2p/6.9r/7.2a and 36% shooter from the field, is expected to rise over the next few years, especially if he is playing on a roster like the one the Phoenix Suns are building, which now looks to definitely be better than the one the Lakers currently run out (sans LeBron and potentially Chris Paul or Paul George).
Of course then, the Phoenix Suns would need to put up with the LaVar freak show themselves, so is that even something that they can or even want to deal with?
One would hope that the organization would have a system in place to some what seal off the noise that LaVar will make (it’ll be impossible to fully insulate the roster from his antics, but things can be done to help minimize his impact).
But let’s just say that the Suns want Lonzo bad enough that they are willing to put up with LaVar’s antics (there could also be the hope that if Lonzo is traded for L.A., that that kind of a burn would centralize LaVar’s scorn on the Lakers. If so, what better team to use harness anger than the Phoenix Suns, the Lakers’ greatest rival), what should General Manager Ryan McDonough offer Magic for Lonzo?
Obviously the first overall pick is off the table, and the Lakers want to keep enough cap space available to sign two max contract players. However, L.A. will still want talent in return.
There is no way that Phoenix would offer Josh Jackson, but what if they offered a more established player, T.J. Warren, and then offered to pick up a horrible contract to make up for the added contract that Warren will have over Lonzo?
I would suspect that a general trade would look something like this:
By adding Warren, it makes the Lakers’ offensive depth much better right away. 16 overall then gives the Lakers an additional pick (and rids the Suns of having to take on a player that might never even play), and by moving Luol Deng, even by acquiring Warren’s contract, L.A. would still have the cap space necessary to sign the two maxs.
Essentially, the Suns get to keep their number one overall pick, but then also add their franchise point guard, one who still has three years of his rookie contract remaining. Acquiring Deng hurts somewhat because he is making $18M this coming season and approximately $18.8M the following season, one year after both Tyson Chandler and Jared Dudley‘s contracts would have already come off the books.
That being said, Deng still might be a tradable piece after this coming season anyway, so they might not be saddled with his albatross for more more than one season as it is.
There is one more catch though: LeBron is almost certain not to make any decision publicly until after the draft, so the odds are that neither team is going to want to make a deal until after they know what LeBron is going to do anyway.
That being said, LeBron may have already made his decision and the wheels are in motion behind the scenes as it is, and the Lakers could direct the Suns to make a particular pick at 16 and then swap the rights whenever LeBron does make his public announcement.
Next: Future first round picks might be untradable
There is also the fact that the Suns would help in the facilitation of making the Lakers a better team. That would really hurt to see the Lakers win a title with a roster that the Suns helped put together.
One argument for that would simply be that their window will be fairly small with LeBron and company as he will probably begin seriously slowing down in the next two to three years, about the time when the Warriors too will start to slow a little, and teams like the Phoenix Suns should be entering the beginning of their own primes.