What should the Lakers prioritize on the trade market?

A wild week for the Lakers saw them extend their winning streak at the start of it before suffering two pretty demoralizing losses by the end of it.

It’s clear the Lakers could be something this season, but can they get their act together and make the right moves? And what are those moves to make?

Let’s dive into that and more in this week’s mailbag episode.

A wild week for the Lakers saw them extend their winning streak at the start of it before suffering two pretty demoralizing losses by the end of it.

It’s clear the Lakers could be something this season, but can they get their act together and make the right moves? And what are those moves to make?

Let’s dive into that and more in this week’s mailbag episode.

I agree that the Lakers have more needs than they can fill and will have to prioritize. To me, I think a 3-and-D wing would be at the bottom of that list because they have enough of them, if healthy, between Dalton Knecht, Jarred Vanderbilt (in theory) and Rui Hachimura.

Which leaves the other two. I would say a backup center is the bigger need. While Jaxson Hayes has been a positive relative to expectations this season, I do not trust him in a playoff series and he can not provide the things the Lakers lack, particularly on defense and as a rebounder.

Having someone like a Jonas Valančiūnas or Brook Lopez allows you to the luxury of deploying Anthony Davis in other ways defensively outside of standing in the paint as a rim protector.

I really think there is just an unnecessary amount of scrutiny on the Lakers about this. They drafted Maxwell Lewis with a higher pick last year, treated him largely the same as they are Bronny in regards to how often he’s in the G League and there wasn’t any comments like this last year.

There were also comments about the Lakers not making a good faith effort in developing Bronny, and I’d ask how? Bronny is regularly practicing and working with the South Bay Lakers. Is he really losing that much but not playing in road games? That feels like a small thing to be hung up on.

I think there are skills there that are pretty easy to see as developing and translating to the NBA. He’s already a strong point-of-attack defender, and that’s going to be his path. Finding an offensive role will be the mission over the next two seasons.

One month into his first NBA season is not the time to write him off.

Two sets have stuck out to me that the Lakers are using often. For one, they are regularly in Horns and have many variations of plays they can run off of that.

Late in games when they need a bucket, they often go to a Horns set to start things. The game-sealing layup from LeBron in the Spurs win on the road started out of a Horns set.

The other set they’re running often is a Spain pick and roll with LeBron James, Anthony Davis and Austin Reaves. It features AD setting a screen for LeBron while Austin simultaneously screens AD’s defender, which generally creates at least one of three scenarios:

1. A clear driving lane for LeBron
2. A clear lane for AD to roll
3. An open 3-pointer for a popping Reaves

There are variations of this, including what AD did against Memphis where, instead of rolling, he popped out to the 3-point line for a wide-open look there, too.

The Spain pick and roll is something that team has gone more and more to in recent weeks. It’s such a nice, easy variation of a LeBron-AD pick and roll that creates more chaos for the defense, especially if there’s someone like Dalton Knecht in one of the corners, too.

Are we sure Vando is ever coming back?

Jokes aside, we are so, so far away from me considering Vando as a starter that it’s hard to forecast. In this team right now, it’s easily Reddish moving out of the rotation for Vanderbilt.

But Vando has been out for over nine months, closing in on ten now. I just don’t think you can really plan for his return at this point. When he rejoins, that’ll be cool and will boost the Lakers. Until then, I’m not really counting the days for him to return yet.