5 trade destinations for D’Angelo Russell
It’s NBA trade rumors season and that means just about any and all names are going to be connected to trade rumors over the next few weeks. Reports will be made and refuted, which makes trade season all the more fun to speculate on which moves are going to be made. As teams get further and further away from playoff contention or decide to go all-in on the present or the future, deals will start being made soon.
On Wednesday, there was a rumor from Brian Geltzeiler that the Los Angeles Lakers have made guard D’Angelo Russell available in trade talks to teams. It came as a shock to everyone, as the Lakers had just selected Russell with the second pick of the 2015 NBA Draft.
In taking to people around the league on who has been made available in trade talks a very surprising name has come up: DeAngelo Russell
— Brian Geltzeiler (@BGeltzNBA) January 28, 2016
After that report came out, people began speculating about the rumor and where would be a good destination for Russell to end up. Then as is the case with most rumors in the NBA, there was a report that quickly refuted the Lakers having any interest in making Russell available for trade from Jake Fischer.
Still it’s trade season and where there’s smoke there’s fire when it comes to speculation. While Russell is expected to be the guard of the future for the Lakers and probably is, it wouldn’t be out of the realm of possibility for the Lakers to move him if they saw the potential for a bigger deal.
While Russell hasn’t been getting all the minutes that fans would like to see him get, he has had some nice moments this season. It’s going to be interesting to see his future with Byron Scott at head coach with Scott reportedly not happy with his attitude, but the best bet would be that Scott won’t be around much longer if the Lakers keep struggling the way that they are.
There was also a moment earlier in the season when Scott made a rather strange decision to bench Russell when he was starting to finally play well, which left Russell confused an unhappy with the move.
Since it’s that fun time of the year to recklessly speculate and have fun, here are five destinations for Russell and why the deal makes sense for each team.
Next: 5. Chicago Bulls