The Los Angeles Lakers manage to grab headlines even during an NBA Finals they aren’t participating in. Currently, their coaching search is the focus, but soon it will shift to their offseason player acquisitions.
As LeBron James approaches 40 and with a weaker draft class looming, the Lakers will need to look to free agency and trades to strengthen their roster. Adding another star to join James and Anthony Davis would be ideal, but this player must be a perfect fit to elevate the Lakers into serious competition with the top teams in the highly competitive Western Conference.
Bill Simmons of The Ringer suggested a trade pitch that would allow the Lakers to acquire Dejounte Murray from the Atlanta Hawks, a team most analysts believe is likely to trade either Murray or Trae Young this summer.
Doesn’t it make more sense for them to trade for Murray? Isn’t the price less? It’s a cheaper contract, ” Simmons said on the Monday, June 10 edition his self-titled podcast. “They could put the [Gabe Vincent and Jarred Vanderbilt] contracts together. Their pick this year, they could draft a guy and then send him after. Their [2029] first-rounder, and they can do a swap in [2028] for Murray and be done with it — and keep the [2031 first-round pick] but not give up quite as much and get a guy on a cheaper deal.”
Murray was an All-Star during his final year with the San Antonio Spurs in 2021-22 before they traded him to Atlanta, where he has averaged north of 20 points per game in each of the past two seasons. He will play next year at the age of 28.
He has produced 21.5 points, 6.3 assists, 5.3 rebounds and 1,5 steals per game across 36 minutes of court time each night. His 3-point percentage and frequency are also on the rise. Murray shot 34.4% on 5.2 attempts per game two years ago, upping those figures to 36.3% on 7.1 attempts in 2023-24, according to Basketball Reference.
In 2024-25, Murray will begin playing on a four-year contract that pays him $114 million total. He won’t carry a salary cap hit above $30 million until the final year of that contract, which is a player option he figures to decline considering how underpaid he is relative to the NBA’s current salary scale — and that’s before the expected cap spike following the next television rights deals that kick in following next season.
Perhaps even more important than Murray’s fit with the roster, both as a player and as an incoming salary, is that the Lakers would hold onto Austin Reaves in Simmons’ scenario.
Los Angeles signed Reaves to an attractive four-year deal worth just $54 million, which will keep him with the team for at least the next two campaigns at a more than reasonable number. The final year of Reaves’ contract is a player option in 2026-27.
Reaves was a crucial part of the Lakers’ run to the Western Conference Finals two years ago as probably the third-best player on the team. He was also a vital cog in the system last season, averaging nearly 16 points and 5.5 assists per night and appearing in all 82 games.
Any team considering a star-level trade with the Lakers this summer is likely to want Reaves included, but Simmons argues that keeping Reaves is essential for the Lakers’ success.
“I wouldn’t trade Reaves to acquire a third star because I believe we need four stars — or at least three stars plus Reaves — to be competitive with the top teams in the Western Conference,” Simmons explained. “If Reaves is part of the trade, I don’t see how we can upgrade to a player in the Murray/Trae class. It just doesn’t seem to work for the Lakers.”
