The Los Angeles Lakers are looking to upgrade their roster and with a season ahead of them that will start only 71 days after they won a championship, they will likely need players who can do even more heavy lifting on the offensive end than they had this past season. With LeBron James very vocally not excited about the quick turnaround and the understandable fatigue at age 36, adding more offensive punch makes sense. It’s with this in mind that we present the latest trade rumor regarding the Lakers and San Antonio Spurs guard DeMar DeRozan.
According to The Ringer’s Kevin O’Connor, the Lakers have shown interest in the four-time All-Star in a deal that would send Danny Green and Kyle Kuzma to the Spurs. Green, of course, won a championship with the Spurs and Kuzma made a fan out of Gregg Popovich at USA Basketball prior to suffering an ankle injury that bled into the past season.
Last season with the Spurs, DeRozan played 68 games, averaging 22 points, five rebounds, and 5.6 assists, the second-highest mark of his career behind his first season in San Antonio in 2018-19. DeRozan also had a career-best true shooting percentage of 60.3% last season, so while he hasn’t been named an All-Star in San Antonio, there’s a very real case that he’s gotten better both as a scorer and a passer, two things the Lakers can really improve on as a group, outside of LeBron and AD.
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