Report: Lakers are ‘seriously engaged’ in talks for Kyle Lowry

Yesterday, Adrian Wojnarowski casually reported on ESPN that the Lakers shouldn’t be ruled out as a Kyle Lowry suitor as the NBA trade deadline approaches.

And on the day of the deadline, we have our latest update, as according to Shams Charania of The Athletic, the Lakers are still in the hunt for the veteran guard:

The Los Angeles Lakers, Philadelphia 76ers and Miami Heat are seriously engaged in talks with the Toronto Raptors regarding Kyle Lowry.

However, as we discussed last night, involving the Lakers’ name is often a tried and true strategy from teams to use them as a boogeyman to get another organization to up their best offer.

And from the sound of the local media in Tampa/Toronto, it might be working:

Or maybe not, via the people in Philly:

The Lakers definitely COULD trade for Lowry. It would be complicated, and likely require Dennis Schröder, Montrezl Harrell, Kentavious Caldwell-Pope and/or Talen Horton-Tucker — the former three of whom are available, the latter of whom hasn’t been so far — but they could do it. If they’re far apart on contract extension negotiations with Schröder, maybe it would even be the right move to make.

But would they really want to voluntarily go through that much upheaval to acquire a (still-talented) 35-year-old while already dealing with major injuries in the middle of a title defense? We’ll see what Rob Pelinka’s stomach is for that amount of turnover as the deadline approaches today at noon, but until we hear more, we should probably assume this is a leverage ploy by the Raptors to get the Sixers (or Heat) to give up juuuuust a bit more to get from the 1-yard line to the endzone.

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