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The Los Angeles Lakers are reportedly interested in a few versions of players with “Anthony” in their name. There’s everything going on with Anthony Davis, LeBron James publicly wishing for Camelo Anthony and now apparently the front office maybe wants to figure out a trade for Jabari Parker, who is basically Melo without the hype machine.
During the most recent episode of “The Hoop Collective,” Brian Windhorst of ESPN dropped the latest on what the Lakers might be looking to do beyond pairing Anthony Davis with LeBron James, and it isn’t exactly pretty:
“Caldwell-Pope is available and has been floated out there for some spots. One place that they have talked to – I’m not saying this deal’s going to get done – but one place that they have talked to is Chicago for Jabari Parker.”
Parker is young-ish and might eventually figure things out, but this smells of Rich Paul trying to keep Kentavious Caldwell-Pope in a large market. Parker can’t stay in front of his own shadow on defense and has openly stated that he thinks defense is overrated. Adding him to LeBron — whose attention on defense wavers a ton — is just shy of a cruel welcome wagon to Davis, who would have to make up for their lapses in caring about defense (if a Davis trade actually goes through, obviously).
On top of the lack of basketball sense this makes for the Lakers, this also can’t happen as framed by Windhorst because of how trades work in the NBA. The Lakers would have to add about $3 million to the deal to make it work and, as they’re very publicly focused on acquiring Davis, finding that extra money is a lot more complicated than you might think.
Rich Paul can try to do KCP all the solids he wants, but right now, the Lakers are focused on trading for another of his clients. Until that happens, stuff like this will just kind of sit there — very much like Parker does on defense. For now, just treat this as a long shot, even if it is worth noting that it’s a possibility.
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