BREAKING: Lakers To Acquire Patrick Beverley From Utah

The Los Angeles Lakers will be acquiring veteran guard Patrick Beverley from the Utah Jazz in exchange for former first-round pick Stanley Johnson and Talen Horton-Tucker.

The Los Angeles Lakers and Utah Jazz will be finalizing a trade on Thursday morning in which veteran guard Patrick Beverley will be going to Los Angeles in exchange for Talen Horton-Tucker and Stanely Johnson, first reported by ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski.

Lakers and Jazz are expected to finalize the deal on Thursday morning, delivering Beverley to LA after a brief stayover with Jazz. No picks involved in the deal, per sources. https://t.co/s4FjjrHu4q

— Adrian Wojnarowski (@wojespn) August 25, 2022

According to Wojnarowski, no draft picks are to be included in this trade from either side.

The Lakers have long been looking to find a deal this offseason that could help them improve at any position on the floor and Beverley has been connected to them in recent weeks.

Coming off of a very disappointing 33-49 season in which Los Angeles missed the playoffs, the mindset for the Lakers’ front-office this offseason was to try and add versatile, dynamic talents around their stars in LeBron James, Anthony Davis and Russell Westbrook.

Patrick Beverley has been in the league for 10 years now and the one constant to his game has always been his defensive presence. One of the better on-ball defenders in the entire league, Beverley swarms his opponents and is always a high-energy guy each and every night, something the Lakers were lacking severely a season ago.

An underrated part of Patrick Beverley’s game last year was his playmaking.

Of 104 players to run 150+ pick + rolls last season, Beverley was 6th most productive.

It was also apparent early on he was comfortable in the role. These clips are all from the beginning of the year. pic.twitter.com/pIHYj7HjuS

— Dane Moore (@DaneMooreNBA) August 25, 2022

Ending up on Utah’s roster due to the Rudy Gobert trade made with the Minnesota Timberwolves earlier this offseason, Beverley now finds himself on his fifth different team in two offseasons. Of course, this includes the Los Angeles Clippers, Memphis Grizzlies (who he never played a game for), Minnesota Timberwolves, Utah Jazz (who he never played a game for) and now the Los Angeles Lakers.

There had been some talk recently about the Jazz possibly looking to waive Patrick Beverley since he was entering the final year of his contract after being dealt from Minnesota, but getting two younger talents in Stanley Johnson and Talen Horton-Tucker is definitely decent value for Utah to take back. After all, they really have nothing to lose here in this scenario, especially if they are to enter what looks to be a full-blown rebuild.

This move by the Los Angeles Lakers and general manager Rob Pelinka may not be the final deal they look to make this offseason, especially given all the talk surrounding Russell Westbrook’s future with the team.

Upon completion of this trade, the Lakers will have an extra open roster spot they can utilize, which could put them in line to execute another trade ahead of training camp in September.

Now 34-years-old, Patrick Beverley is coming off a 2021-22 season with the Minnesota Timberwolves in which he averaged 9.2 points, 4.1 rebounds and 4.6 assists per game over the course of 58 regular season games. 

It will be interesting to see if the Lakers utilize the veteran guard in their starting unit or have him come off-the-bench as their sixth man behind Russell Westbrook, that is if Westbrook is still on the team to begin the 2022-23 season.