After numerous rumors swirling around
the team for weeks, the only player the Lakers ended up trading was
guard Steve Blake.
Blake was traded to the Golden State
Warriors in exchange for guards Kent Bazemore and Marshon Brooks.
The Lakers had hoped to either trade
enough salary to end up under the salary cap or to acquire additional
draft picks for the loaded 2014 draft. Ultimately, the team failed on
both of those accounts as they were asking too much for forwards PauGasol and Jordan Hill as well as center Chris Kaman.
This has to be disappointing to fans as
the best path for the Lakers to rebuild would have been to stockpile
assets and trade anyone who is not part of their future and continue
to lose games.
Now what the team must do is ride the
season out with their current roster and wait until the summer to
make additional moves.
Over the summer the Lakers will have
very few trade assets and their best bet would be to try to do a sign
and trade involving Pau Gasol. They could re-sign him for a lower
salary and then send him off to another team.
This is unfortunately one of the very
few trade options the Lakers have to help their rebuild process since
they failed to do anything significant at the trade deadline.
