After swinging and missing on Klay Thompson, James Harden and Jonas Valanciunas — a trio of players that LeBron James was reportedly willing to take a major pay cut for — the Los Angeles Lakers are now running out of ways to make meaningful improvements to their roster ahead of the 2024-25 NBA season. Thus far, Dalton Knecht and Bronny James are the only new additions to the Lakers roster, and as time ticks away, more and more free agents are signing deals by the hour. The Lakers remain linked to Southern California native DeMar DeRozan, however, their best bet to make meaningful roster upgrades may come via a trade.
As for who the Lakers could be setting their sights on in a potential deal, The Athletic's Jovan Buha reported that there are four three-and-D wings linked to LA as possible trade targets, including one player who Lakers fans — in addition to LeBron James and Anthony Davis — are incredibly familiar with.
“Four names that have been consistently linked to the Lakers on the trade market have been Jerami Grant, Kyle Kuzma, Dorian Finney-Smith, and Cam Johnson,” Jovan Buha of The Athletic reported on Wednesday. “And as I recently reported at The Athletic, I’ve heard that the Lakers have held trade talks with Portland, Brooklyn, and Utah among other teams in recent days. So the Portland and Brooklyn talks would align with those players being on the trade market, and at this point it’s a matter of haggling over picks and which players are involved.”
LA will be hesitant to part ways with any 1st Round picks for players of this caliber, which in turn limits their ability to get a deal done. However, as Portland, Brooklyn, Utah and Washington all prepare to tank away the 2024-25 season with a strong 2025 draft class incoming, each of those teams could see the incentive of worsening their rosters ahead of the season. Could a package of D'Angelo Russell and Jalen Hood-Schifino get the job done for Kuzma? Not only would Russell come off the books at the end of next season, removing Kuzma from one of the league's worst rosters would seemingly better Washington's chances of landing the #1 pick in the 2025 NBA Draft.
Kuzma has averaged 20.2 points, 7.4 rebounds and 3.8 assists per game over the last three seasons with the Washington Wizards. Moving Kuzma to Los Angeles or otherwise would allow Washington to find more minutes for young forwards such as Bilal Coulibaly, Corey Kispert, and Patrick Baldwin Jr.
Are we heading toward a Kyle Kuzma-Lakers reunion?
Given the Lakers' reported (and justified) reluctance in including any future 1st round picks in a possible deal for Kyle Kuzma — or Grant, Finney-Smith or Cam Johnson — the chances of a reunion are more unlikely than likely. The cruel irony here is that the Lakers should've never dealt Kuzma away in the first place. In four seasons in LA, Kuzma averaged 15.2 points, 5.6 rebounds and 1.9 assists. During the Lakers run to the 2020 NBA Title, Kuz averaged 10 points and 3 rebounds in 23 minutes per game.
After a 1st round exit in the 2021 NBA Playoffs, the Lakers decided to reshuffle their roster in a major way, turning Kuzma, Kentavious Caldwell-Pope and Montrezl Harrell into Russell Westbrook. Westbrook's Lakers stint was as tumultuous as it was brief. The fit with LeBron James and Anthony Davis never worked, and after just a season and a half, the Lakers were forced to include a 2027 1st round pick just to offload Westbrook to Utah.
A return to the Lakerland would likely be a welcome change of scenery for Kuzma, who after making postseason trips each of his final two seasons in LA, has been toiling away on Wizards teams that have won 85 games combined over the last three seasons.
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