LOS ANGELES — What’s the big deal? So the Lakers didn’t swing for the fences at the trade deadline. Didn’t find someone who’d magically put them on equal footing with this season’s championship favorites. Didn’t rearrange the deck chairs.
They didn’t do anything.
Didn’t lay down a bunt.
Didn’t plug any holes.
Didn’t get better.
Let the whole trade deadline day go by Thursday, and didn’t improve, not even 1%.
And what if, in a few months, everyone’s asking: What if a minor move back on Feb. 8 might have headed off major consequences?
Because the ninth-place Lakers – a yo-yo-ing 27-25 entering play Thursday against the defending NBA champion Denver Nuggets – clung tight to their core.
Inspired perhaps by those Nuggets, who swept them in the Western Conference finals last season, the Lakers continue to embrace the notion of building continuity – and that’s cool, so long as Coach Darvin Ham keeps it in mind when he’s drawing up his rotations.
They didn’t trade D’Angelo Russell just to trade D’Angelo Russell. They didn’t splurge just because.
What the Lakers want you to keep in mind, fans, is that they held on to assets that will help them try to ply a third star – think of the Cleveland Cavaliers’ Donovan Mitchell – away from his current team in the offseason, when they can offer a package with potentially three first-round draft picks.
But that cloak of responsibility is concealing their irresponsibility: This team desperately seeking wing defense also didn’t find a way to fill its Jarred Vanderbilt-sized void.
It’s possible they know something we on the outside don’t. Perhaps they have a reasonable expectation that Vando’s foot injury won’t keep him out for the rest of the season. And maybe there is reason for optimism about guard Gabe Vincent’s return-to-competition timeline, too.
But barring their swift and full recoveries, it would have been prudent for the Lakers not to stand pat, but to…
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