Will LeBron James STAY with the Los Angeles Lakers? 👀 'HE SHOULD!' - Brian Windhorst

But we need to start with the teams that everyone has their eye on ahead of the trade deadline. It's just under 24 hours away. So with that, let's welcome in our senior NBA insider, Adrian Wojnarowski. Woj, the deadline, less than 24 hours from right now. We just saw Xavier Tillman get traded to the Boston Celtics as you first reported for two second round picks. GMs, though, they're still on the phone. Some of the best offers. Maybe we still haven't even seen them yet. What is the latest you're hearing on the trade front around the league? You're right, Malika. Things are starting to loosen up. Things are getting more serious. Teams are starting to really decide where they want to be aggressive, try to get deals done and try to figure out who they're competing with, what other teams have. And this is sort of the natural progression of trade deadline week. We're into Wednesday now. We're just over 24 hours away from the trade deadline. And now teams like Philadelphia remain really active. Whether it's players like Alec Burks, Boyan Bogdanovich, you know, in Detroit, those are certainly players that they're discussing in potential trade talks. But largely, there are still way more buyers than there are sellers, which means that the prices are high. And I think what teams are measuring, teams like Golden State, like the Lakers, any number of teams, you know, who would like to improve at what cost, how can we really get a difference maker in here at the prices, which teams generally think are pretty high right now. Charlotte's another team that's very active, whether it's Miles Bridges, you know, potentially a P.J. Washington, Gordon Hayward, you know, they are very much in asset acquisition mode. OK, so a lot of teams right now just sort of feeling out exactly what's going to happen between now and tomorrow's trade deadline. You mentioned the Lakers. Let's zero in on them just a little bit more. What can we expect from them ahead of the deadline? Malika, I think for L.A., their calculus has changed here in recent weeks with the reemergence of D'Angelo Russell as their point guard. He's playing not just some of his best basketball as a Laker, some of his best basketball as a pro. And maybe three weeks to a month ago, he was very available. And I think the Lakers thought there might be some opportunities to upgrade on him. That isn't the case right now. And players who the Lakers have had interest in, DeJounte Murray, Bruce Brown, specifically with Brown. It's really hard for them to get make the money work on a trade without putting D'Angelo Russell in. And that doesn't really make sense for them. Here's what the Lakers are hoping that they can get Cam Reddish back here relatively soon. Gabe Vincent. And the hope that Jared Vanderbilt may not need surgery on his injured foot, that they can get him back in a few weeks. I think that's what the Lakers are weighing. I think they're going to continue to be active. But I think there's a level of restraint there with L.A. that maybe for what they want to do the offseason, when they have three first round picks available in trades versus the one right now, that might, that would get them involved in some more significant trade scenarios. Those are the last few assets that they absolutely need to weigh. Woj, thank you. I know you're incredibly busy. Your time is precious. We're going to need you back, though. But thank you for stopping by. I want to bring it back to our panel here. With everything we heard, Kendrick Perkins, the Lakers, it doesn't seem like there is a drastic move out there that they can make. It's not. So how do they get back in playoff contention, really title contention here? Well, it's all about title contentions. And I don't believe that they can, to be honest with you. I feel like they're going to make a playoff push. But if they're going to get back in the title contentions, there's only one person come to mind. And that's Anthony Davis. Right? Like, can he go out in this postseason and have a Jokic-type postseason, meaning 30-13? And I'm not going to even say 9-6, because Jokic is just on a different level when it comes to passing the ball. But when you think about Anthony Davis as of right now, 25-12, I think, I believe fifth in the league in blocked shots. His defensive impact and what he's been doing for us for the Lakers in the interior scoring-wise, he just had, what, his third triple-double a couple nights ago. So, I mean, this team is going to go as far as Anthony Davis take them. We know what LeBron is going to bring, but it's unfair to put that type of pressure on them. But we saw last year what happened when they got swept by the Denver Nuggets. I mean, Jokic kicked his ass. Anthony Davis kicked his ass. And so, at the end of the day, he's going to go as far as AD takes him. Yeah, as Wojka described there, the Lakers' trade situation inverted because they were having difficulty moving D'Angelo Russell because people didn't like his player option. They were almost being forced into two moves, to trade for expiring salary for Russell and then moving him to a place like Atlanta for DeJounte Murray. Now, it doesn't make any sense to do that deal. And not only that, even if they were able to find a deal for D'Angelo Russell, the replacement isn't as valuable. And if D'Angelo Russell picks up that option, he then becomes a trade asset in the summer when they have more draft picks to trade. And this is not going to make LeBron happy. LeBron probably is not going to want to hear that the best hand the Lakers have is to stay put. But the Lakers are probably not going to want to hear that LeBron is still weighing what to do with his contract option. So I think what we probably are headed for tomorrow at 3 o'clock is the Lakers not being exactly thrilled and LeBron not being exactly thrilled. And they make the best of the situation, move past it, and try to do what they can. Because I think that they can make noise if they get the right matchup in the playoffs. One thing we know and that we've seen about the Los Angeles Lakers is that they get up for big games. And the one name that Woj mentioned was D'Angelo Russell, and you talked a little bit about it. But Austin, I love that yesterday. Trade D'Angelo has been the biggest problem, not only for the Lakers, but for the league in the best kind of ways based off of how he's playing. And you know, the construction of the Lakers, his value actually remaining with the Lakers to me seems the highest. Because if you lose him, you're losing the guy who's made the most threes for your team. Your team is 15th in three-point shooting. They're a middle-of-the-pack team. And on every LeBron James squad, you need a guy that you have to be able to kick it out to, to space the floor, knock down the three. Every championship has that type of guy, because LeBron James in year 21 is able to just barrel to the rim. And then we know what Perk said about A.D., he's going to get what he needs at the rim. But who is going to knock down the shots when the defenses collapse? Their best option might just be D'Lo, and so they're almost, like, they're hamstrung. You're right. It is D'Lo. It is D'Lo, especially for how he's played. I mean, let's talk about on the basketball side of this. As a player, the best thing you want is your team to double down on you and believe in you. D'Lo's best basketball came after a team accepted him in Brooklyn and really gave him the keys. I'm not suggesting the Lakers do that. They have LeBron James and Anthony Davis there. I think their lineups need to be tailor-made more so around Reeves and Russell's success. I don't have issues with LeBron and A.D. getting their own. That's what they do. They're the best players in the NBA. Two of them. Those other two, when they play consistently well, they're both X factors for the Lakers. When they play well, they play much better. I don't think there's any moves right now for screaming game-changer in terms of what's on the trade market where you have to make a move right now. We were just talking about months prior that the Lakers had all the assets and that Palenka had one of the best summers available. Yep. One of the best summers, and he got all these players re-signed and added new pieces. They haven't been fully healthy all year. Let's let this run out a little bit and see kind of where Russell takes it. There's no point going to the market. I don't even take over. I don't disagree with you. I think that the Jared Vanderbilt injury could be, I don't want to, catastrophic. It could be. That's how important he is for this team. Gabe Vincent, we haven't seen him healthy. But you've been in these rooms, Perk, where you're sitting, you know, LeBron James is over here and Rob Palenka or the general manager is over here, and it's just like, okay, I'm not happy. And they say, I'm not happy. I don't want to be sitting in the middle of that. So what does this mean for LeBron and the Lakers going forward? Well, he doesn't say it. He tweets something. Sure. That's the thing. It's not. That feels worse. So look, LeBron and the Lakers have three options going forward. One, LeBron can pick up his player option for next year for $51 million. It's a gigantic number and he's earned every cent of it, probably twice that. B, he can opt out of that contract and go somewhere else, which I don't really see happening, but it is an option I have to put out. Or three, and you know, this is something that can't happen until this summer. You can see right there, August 18th, he could sign a new contract for multiple years. So this is not something. And LeBron, here's the thing. LeBron's option deadline isn't until June 29th. And when is that? That just so happens to be? It is three days after the draft. And who's eligible potentially to be drafted? His son. Because he has no incentive at all to do anything with that option right now and limit his choices. So I think what we're going to see here is a couple of deep exhales, like we just heard from Perk right there. And who's next on our calendar? The Nuggets on Thursday night. But at the end of the day, look, Rob Pelinka has a job to do. And I understand, you know, Bron getting in his feelings and wanting his way in certain situations. But as a GM, you have to do what's best for the team. And anybody that's been watching the Lakers know that Rob Pelinka can't just make a move because Bron is, you know, has his attitude, which we go through every single trade deadline, right? Every single season at this point, we get LeBron James' attitude. So Rob Pelinka has a job to do, and he has to make sure that he has the right pieces in place. And right now, he got to stand pat, in my opinion. But just a year ago, we were praising him for the job he did last year. And I think giving 365 days to see it out after a Western Conference Finals run, like you sort of have to see that through. I don't think you just combust it all just because another season's here. The rest of the West has gotten better. You guys haven't figured things out, you know, the way that we normally see it. You did have some highlight moments. Like, I don't think you just get rid of what you built that took you to the Western Conference Finals so soon. I get that, but a key piece in that was Dennis Shrewden. And you need athleticism at that guard position and wing position on defense. You see, we praising D'Angelo Russell on what he's doing offensively. It's two sides of the damn basketball, and you got to remember, last postseason, he was on the bench a lot. Yeah. In the last series. He played well at Memphis. Yeah, because he couldn't. He couldn't do nothing. He couldn't do nothing but Jamal Byrd. Right. But you would still take the Lakers, if they can get through, if they can somehow do it and be healthy, you would still take the Lakers, right, against Oklahoma City. I would give them a fighting chance. You would still give them a fighting chance against the Timberwolves for a low-seed, high-seed. And I also say, there might be some people saying, well, if D'Angelo Russell is playing so well and his value is getting better, the Lakers should keep him, then why can't they just trade him for somebody better? And the answer is, is because the teams want D'Angelo Russell and stuff. Right. And the Lakers are like, that price just doesn't make sense for them. Well, and there's also, as Woj was saying, there's more buyers right now than they thought, than folks thought there would be. And so that makes everyone look at the assets that everybody has, weigh them, and maybe now at this point, there are more teams that think that maybe with what they have, they can sneak in, but the Lakers are now one of those teams as well.