Lakers News: Wizards Head Coach Weighs In On Rui Hachimura Trade

The latest Laker will make his debut tonight.

The newest addition to your Los Angeles Lakers, fourth-year forward Rui Hachimura, will be playing his first game in the purple and gold tonight on his new home floor, Crypto.com Arena, against the visiting and very bad San Antonio Spurs.

LA's front made in my opinion a savvy move in offloading the expiring $5.3 million contract of useless deep-bench point guard Kendrick Nunn and three future second-round picks (they still have four left that can be traded, plus two firsts) to the Washington Wizards in exchange for Hachimura, a 6'8" forward who, despite his three-point numbers this season being kinda "meh" (33.7% on three attempts per game), has quietly had an excellent year on catch-and-shoot triples. 

Per Kirk Goldsberry of ESPN (who weighed in on the trade news shared by his teammate at the Worldwide Leader, Adrian Wojnarowski), Hachimura converted 85-of-206 of his catch-and-shoot looks from long range during his last two seasons with the Wiz, while no other Laker who has taken at least 100 catch-and-shoot threes has converted them at that rate.

Washington Wizards head coach Wes Unseld Jr. recently spoke about the deal, per Brandon "Scoop B" Robinson of Bally Sports. He offered up a fairly diplomatic response.

Rui Hachimura - Kendrick Nunn trade reaction from Wizards head coach Wes Unseld Jr. pic.twitter.com/Hy3ofN5fR4

— 👑 Brandon “Scoop B” Robinson (@ScoopB) January 25, 2023

"It's always a situation where you have to give up something to get something. There's a lot of layers that go into making the trade work, but I think it opens up some minutes for some of the guys, obviously there's a financial dynamic in play," Unseld said. 

"You lose a guy in Rui, I think in his role he was good for us. We also gain a guy I think that can really help us as well. Kendrick is a guy who I think is a 36% three-point shooter, he's instant offense off the bench. He's got an opportunity to come in and maybe change his impact a little bit. I think he's had a down year thus far, but we've seen him over the last couple of years [when he was with the Miami Heat] really fill it up."

Reading between the lines a bit, it certainly seems like Unseld is less than happy for this major personnel downgrade. Which points to just what an attribute Hachimura could be for the Lakers!

Nunn was abysmal for the Lakers. After sitting out the entire 2021-22 season with a knee injury, he returned a shadow of his South Beach self this year, and quickly fell to the fringes of Darvin Ham's rotation.