Lakers Rumors: LA, Brooklyn Both In Running To Trade For Same East All-Star
As all the Zach LaVine trade buzz has been dialed down to a murmur of late, your Los Angeles Lakers appear to be shifting their focus to another Eastern Conference All-Star: Atlanta Hawks combo guard Dejounte Murray. To be fair, he was named an All-Star while with the San Antonio Spurs in the West, but he's still a fringe All-Star player in the East, and might have a real shot at making a second such team if the team surrounding him was better.
It appears that tonight's competition, the Brooklyn Nets, is another of the major market programs intrigued with the prospect of adding his services.
According to Michael Scotto of HoopsHype, both Brooklyn and Los Angeles have been dealing with some negotiating hiccups.
The Lakers obviously want to package sometime-starting point guard D'Angelo Russell and his $17.3 million contract in the deal (he has an $18.9 million player option for 2024-25, far more than he'll fetch on the open market), but the Hawks don't like the idea of him playing next to All-Star point guard Trae Murphy, as another ball-dominant, defense-free guard. Apparently Atlanta would want to get a third team involved in any deal, but would prefer to extract LA shooting guard Austin Reaves and his team-friendly $12 million annual salary.
Brooklyn, meanwhile, has been unwilling to offload two future first round picks in a trade with the Hawks, the price Atlanta is said to prefer (LA can only offer one future first, but clearly Reaves is tantalizing enough that they must be willing to make an exception).
Murray would represent a massive defensive upgrade over either Russell or Reaves, and is a rangy, long guard on another team-friendly deal, but the big question mark with him is that he's on a $17.7 million expiring deal, so any club that acquires him must be prepared to offer him a lucrative contract extension and hope that he'll take the stability over free agency this summer.
Across 40 games this year, the 6'5" 27-year-old is averaging 21 points on .471/.383/.825 shooting splits, 4.8 rebounds, 4.8 assists, and 1.4 steals a night.
