Although the Los Angeles Lakers appear to have a championship-caliber roster heading into training camp for the 2023-24 season, they still seem to have at least a passing interest in acquiring yet another star.
Days ago, Jovan Buha of The Athletic noted Trae Young of the Atlanta Hawks has been on the Lakers’ radar for some time. Buha even implied that the team could continue to be interested in acquiring him, depending on how events unfold in the coming months.
Some Lakers fans may be enamored with the idea of getting Young, but Fox Sports 1 personality Skip Bayless warned Young wouldn’t be a good fit for the Purple and Gold (h/t The Cold Wire).
"I would not want him on my basketball team… They call him 'Ice Trae' and I call him 'Mice Trae' because he's so little… It's a bad combination, it's like [Russell] Westbrook."
Skip Bayless on whether Trae Young would be a good fit on the Lakerspic.twitter.com/MvTxKgNm6C
— ClutchPoints (@ClutchPoints) September 4, 2023
Bayless noted how Young is a very high-volume 3-point shooter yet he shoots a low percentage from that distance. In addition, he’s turnover-prone and a defensive liability due to his modest stature.
In fact, the commentator said Young on the Lakers would be a “bad combination” and compared it to the failed experiment with Russell Westbrook.
Los Angeles seems to be set at guard with D’Angelo Russell and the emerging Austin Reaves as its incumbent starters and Gabe Vincent and Max Christie backing them up. But one can never be sure what could happen once events shake out in the first couple of months of the NBA season, especially with a number of teams having loaded up this offseason.