The Chicago Bulls are one of the biggest surprises in the NBA, already surpassing last year’s win total by nine games. Zach LaVine has supplied his typical brand of outside bombs and inside rim attacks. DeMar DeRozan is fifth in the league in scoring, dropping 28.1 points per game off one of the best off-the-dribble mid-range attacks we’ve seen since Michael Jordan laced them up in the Windy City. Lonzo Ball and Alex Caruso also provided excellent two-way basketball in the backcourt before the injury bug bit them.
- Anthony Davis Comes Home To Chicago
- The Lakers Add Veterans, Youth And Depth
- The Lakers And Bulls Should Shake Things Up This Summer
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Still, the Bulls defense is outside the top-10, and without a solid rim protector to ward off opposing shot attempts in the lane, they feel like a second round playoff team this year, a tier below the Eastern Conference’s best squads, the Bucks, 76ers, and Heat.
If you’re an NBA fan and haven’t spent the past three months meditating in a cave, you know the Lakers’ season has blown up, leaving their title hopes ripped into a million pieces. Russell Westbrook’s terrible outside shooting and his disinterested brand of defense, along with his I-don’t-care attitude during press conferences, have turned him into the villain of Hollywood. Anthony Davis can’t stay on the court, and the Lakers don’t have another viable option at the 5 to replace him. Trevor Ariza, Carmelo Anthony, and Kent Bazemore look like they’re moving through sludge on D. Things have gotten so bad on the less fun end the Lakers’ best defender has often been undrafted rookie Austin Reaves.
The Lakers pushed all their chips into the middle this past summer for Brodie and have gone bust with no easy fixes awaiting them in the 2022 offseason. GM Rob Pelinka will have to get bold to salvage this situation before the Lakers sink to the bottom of the NBA with nearly all their future first-round draft picks traded away, making any type of tank job an impossible solution.
The Bulls need a rim protector to launch them toward a title, and the Lakers must rescue themselves before they find themselves stuck in a five-year lottery nosedive.
We propose a Chicago and Los Angeles blockbuster trade:
Chicago Bulls Receive: Anthony Davis
Los Angeles Lakers Receive: Nikola Vucevic, Alex Caruso, Coby White, Ayo Dosunmu, Patrick Williams, 2022 First-Round Draft Pick, 2026 First-Round Draft Pick
Below we’ll break down the benefits of our deal for the Bulls and Lakers.
Anthony Davis Comes Home To Chicago
Upon first glance, this looks like a slam dunk trade for the Bulls. They land an 8-time All-Star in Anthony Davis for five role players, none of whom are top-50 players in the league. However, there are risks for Chicago within this transaction.
Let’s begin with AD’s injury history, which isn’t the major hazard. AD has endured some horrible injury luck this season. Davis suffered a sprained left MCL earlier in the 2021-22 season after his teammate LeBron James pushed Minnesota Timberwolves wing Jalen McDaniels, into his leg. Then a few weeks later, AD landed on Utah Jazz center Rudy Gobert’s foot, going up for a rebound, spraining his ankle. AD can’t be blamed for these types of injuries. No amount of conditioning would have changed things.
The negativity swirling around The Brow stems mainly from playing next to the most famous athlete in the world, LeBron James, in one of the biggest markets in America, Los Angeles. Several superstars have also missed significant time due to injury over the past couple of seasons, yet seem to get a pass from the national media.
Here’s a breakdown:
Anthony Davis: 73 total games played over the last two seasons
Paul George: 80 total games played over the last two seasons
Kevin Durant: 74 total games played over the last two seasons
Kawhi Leonard: 52 total games played over the last two seasons
Jamal Murray: 48 total games played over the last two seasons
We could go on, but you get the point. AD’s never suffered a significant, athletic-sapping injury. He’s constantly been hit with minor issues throughout his career.
Still, Davis does go through one ill-fated injury after another, like many other NBA players, which undermines his squad’s ability to compete at a high level. Perhaps he’ll continue to find himself in and out of the lineup with nagging, unfortunate injuries for the Bulls, sapping them of their defensive anchor.
However, the Bulls’ primary risk in this trade runs deeper than AD’s injury woes. Chicago would mortgage their future by trading four young solid building blocks, Caruso, White, Dosunmu, and Williams along with two first-round picks for Davis with no guarantee they’d be the best team in the suddenly deep and talented Eastern Conference. Bradley Beal could head to an already talented 76ers squad during the offseason forming an All-Star trio with Joel Embiid and James Harden. The defending champion Bucks are also lurking in the shadows (somehow forgotten) with Giannis, Middleton, and Holiday. If the Nets get healthy and whole, the threesome of Ben Simmons, Kyrie Irving, and Kevin Durant could be nearly unbeatable. And the Miami Heat are no joke either, with Jimmy Butler, Bam Adebayo, Kyle Lowry, and Tyler Herro.
The Bulls would have to make this trade, mortgaged future or not. NBA teams play for one thing, and one thing only: titles. AD proved he was a championship-caliber player in 2020 with the Lakers, and he’d give Chicago the best shot they’ve had to climb the mountain in the last 30 years or so.
After our trade, the Bulls would feature a starting lineup of Lonzo Ball, Zach LaVine, DeMar DeRozan, Tristan Thompson, and Anthony Davis. On paper, Chicago would have it all. Lonzo Ball is an excellent passing point guard with a solid spread-the-floor three-point jumper, and he’s a top-tier on-ball defender. Zach LaVine and DeMar DeRozan are two of the best playmaking wings in the league, both capable of manufacturing their own shots and setting up their teammates with easy looks. Tristan Thompson is a pure energy defender/rebounder who does all the dirty work teams need to rack up wins. And Anthony Davis is a two-way terror of a center who is a top-5 defender (when healthy) and has an excellent mid-range jumper and a solid post game.
The Lakers Add Veterans, Youth And Depth
On the Lakers’ side of things, this trade might seem awful at first, but if the Purple and Gold play their hand perfectly, this proactive deal could pay off after a one-year mini-rebuild.
Here are the Lakers facts:
The Purple and Gold have nearly all their cap space tied up into three players, LeBron James, Anthony Davis, and Russell Westbrook.
Russell Westbrook has a player option for $47 million next season, and when (not if) he opts in, he’ll be nearly untradeable.
The Lakers have a roster of aging, one-way (at best) players on minimum deals.
The Lakers have no means to bring in solid two-way role players during the offseason because, again, they have nearly all their cap space tied up in their “Big 3.”
As much as the Lakers want to believe they are championship contenders with a healthy core of Davis, James, Westbrook, and Horton-Tucker, there is no evidence to suggest that is true. According to Cleaning the Glass, when all four players have played together, they have a -12.2 point differential per 100 possessions, good for the 7th percentile in the league.
The Lakers have a poorly constructed roster that is slow and lacks the depth needed to get past the second round. LeBron James and Anthony Davis can’t drag this roster toward a title, and in LA, making the playoffs isn’t enough. Rob Pelinka needs to put on his big boy pants over the offseason and right the ship by trading AD for some much-needed young help.
Lakers fans might shout out: We can land another All-Star for Anthony Davis; why trade him for five role players?
Even though AD’s injury narrative is unfair, it’s real, and his value around the league has tanked over the last year. Two seasons ago, the Timberwolves would have jumped at the chance to land Anthony Davis for Karl-Anthony Towns. Now, they’d hang the phone up on Rob Pelinka. The Lakers will not get a top-20 player for AD. Maybe they could convince the Celtics to trade Jaylen Brown for Davis but will a combination of James, Brown, Westbrook, and eight other bottom-of-the-barrel, minimum players do anything except make the play-in and then get smoked in the first round?
The Lakers need desperately to fill their coffers with good, young talent.
In our trade with the Bulls, The Lakers land Ayo Dosunmu, a 22-year-old rookie averaging 11.2 PPG and 6.2 APG while shooting 38.3% from deep as a starter this season. Throughout 2021-22 he’s flashed legitimate lead guard playmaking skills, an excellent first step, and solid on-ball defensive talents.
Coby White, another solid, young point guard, would also come to Hollywood. The third-year pro is averaging 13.6 PPG and 40.4% from deep in 2021-22. White has an excellent outside stroke and a nice off-the-dribble mid-range game.
Patrick Williams would arrive in LA, providing outstanding defense energy and superb finishing skills at the rim. Alex Caruso would come back home, bringing some of the best perimeter defense in the league and solid passing chops with him. Finally, the Lakers would add Nikola Vucevic, a four-time All-Star center with a sweet outside stroke, who’d fit nicely next to LeBron James as a floor-spreading big man.
Lakers fans shouldn’t hold out hope Brodie will turn down his player option for next season. You’d have to search long and hard through the annals of history to find anyone who has passed on $47 million for one year of work. Even Bill Gates would have a hard time turning down that type of money. Next season, the Purple and Gold will have to bite the bullet and take the Houston Rockets route on Russell Westbrook, sitting him and his massive cap hit for the entire season. The Lakers would miss the playoffs in 2022-23, but their youth movement would gain valuable experience next to all-time great LeBron James. Then in the summer of 2023, the Purple and Gold would be off Brodie’s contract and Vucevic’s $22 million deal, set up to chase a max free agent and one or two upper-tier 3-and-D players.
Here’s the trump card: LeBron James has continually said he wants to finish his career as a Laker, and we know he wants at least one more title to his name, so what if he resigns on something like a $10 million, two-year contract after his own max deal expires during the summer of 2023? Then the Lakers would have enough room to sign two superstars after only a single down season.
The Lakers could end up with a core of LeBron James, superstar A, superstar B, Ayo Dosunmu, Alex Caruso, Coby White, Patrick Williams, Talen Horton-Tucker, Austin Reaves, and their 2022 first-round pick from the Bulls.
The Lakers And Bulls Should Shake Things Up This Summer
The Bulls have two of the best wings in the NBA, but Chicago’s championship hopes look bleak without a solid rim protector behind them to guide their defense. A combination of Anthony Davis, DeMar DeRozan, Zach LaVine, and Lonzo Ball would be a legitimate Big-4 that could easily win the chip in 2022-23.
The Lakers are paddling upstream with their hands through a muddy river as logs strike their boat. They need to make a change, and although trading AD for five role players and two first-round draft picks will be painful next season, in the long run, it could pay off huge for the Purple and Gold.
