Future Hall of Famer Expected to Request Trade from Lakers

The Los Angeles Lakers are coming off of a bad season. They didn’t make the playoffs. They didn’t even make the play-in tournament. The team has been linked to several players this offseason and we have a few good reasons to believe that trade deals could save the next season for the Lakers.

Russell Westbrook may leave the team in the offseason. According to Grant Hughes of Bleacher Report, LeBron James may request a trade sooner than expected. Does this make sense? LeBron came to LA to win, but he is not really winning games.

“The Los Angeles Lakers have no promising young players likely to ascend, no depth, virtually no first-round picks to trade, no reason to believe Russell Westbrook will be better in his 15th season than he was in his 14th and no legitimate chance to contend—now or in the near future,” Hughes wrote. “Don’t you, LeBron James, think long and hard about engineering an exit?”

LeBron to request a trade from the Lakers?

LeBron has never requested a trade, because he was fine with his teams. He did leave Cleveland twice. Will he leave the Lakers?

Sam Amick of The Athletic suggests that LeBron may play out of his current deal. The four-time NBA champion is entering free agency in 2023. His son, Bronny, is eligible to join the NBA in the same year. This may affect his future decision. LeBron wants to play with his son, remember?

“Based on my conversations with people who have a strong sense of such things, it’s clear James is considering playing out this contract rather than signing a two-year extension this summer,” Amick reported on April 12. “If flexibility and freedom are the goals here, James (who is owed $44.4 million next season) could go back to the year-by-year approach he perfected in his second Cleveland stop.”

LeBron likes the Lakers and he’d love to retire as a Laker. He plans to win a few more rings before calling it career. Will the Lakers give him a chance to accomplish this?

“I came here to win a championship. And I want to win more. So I accomplished what I wanted to accomplish, but I’m still hungry for more,” LeBron said during his exit interview. “I’m confident that this organization wants the same. That’s what this organization has always been about. … So I’ve done that. We’ve done that. But I want to do it again.”