Lakers’ deadline to trade Russell Westbrook might be sooner than they think

NBA GMs are notorious procrastinators. Very rarely will you see a decision made until the situation gets to a point where they have no choice but to act. This offseason has been a hilarious example of all this, as because there isn’t any kind of deadline, we’ve gone months now waiting for some franchise-altering decisions.

Fortunately, with training camps only a few weeks away, we might finally be approaching some decisions. Maybe. Oh hell, who knows.

Thing is: For the Lakers at least, waiting until training camp might not be soon enough.

For years now, LeBron James has enjoyed getting teammates together for a mini-training camp ahead of official team activities. This sounds great if everyone is on the same page, but as two main parties of such a camp infamously sat in the same arena and completely ignored each other, you can see how that might get a little awkward.

So while Rob Pelinka might feel like he has until camps start to make a decision on whether or where to trade Russell Westbrook, that might not actually jibe with his star’s offseason plans.

Where this gets a little tricky is when you consider the Lakers’ deadline might fall before Brooklyn’s, even if it might be by a mere few weeks. Brooklyn can afford to hold out all the way through to camp, and maybe beyond. Not like things are getting worse. The Lakers, on the other hand, have to figure it out as they hope to compete this season.

To this point, the talks between the Lakers and Nets haven’t progressed as Pelinka has refused to include both the first-round picks the Lakers have at their disposal. It’s probably pretty safe to assume that a looming unofficial training camp might be just the thing to make him finally push his chips to the middle of the table.

This week in the “Lakers Lounge,” Harrison Faigen and I discussed this, the few Lakers games we now know about, and some concerns we have as it pertains to trading for Kyrie Irving.

You can listen to the full episode below, and to make sure you never miss a show, subscribe to the Silver Screen and Roll podcast feed on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher or Google Podcasts.

And for a short-form recap pod, check out Lakers Lowdown, in which Anthony Irwin recaps the previous day’s news and gets you ready for the day ahead in LakerLand, every weekday morning on the Silver Screen & Roll Podcast feed.