Which future first-round NBA Draft picks are the Lakers able to trade this season?

There's no secret about the Los Angeles Lakers' aspirations for the 2024-25 NBA season — they want to win an NBA Championship. Any year in which LeBron James is on their roster that will ultimately be the goal.

Unfortunately, the Lakers didn't progress very much toward their ultimate goal this summer as they had a mostly underwhelming offseason. The Dalton Knecht selection was a great one at No. 17 overall, and re-signing LeBron was obviously a good thing even though he wound up taking a full max contract. Even the hiring of JJ Redick was an intriguing one. At the end of the day, though, no stars or bonafide impactful players were brought to Los Angeles. They're essentially running back a team that lost in the first round of the NBA playoffs and was bad enough to have Darvin Ham fired.

The Lakers missed out on all of the impactful free agents, but that doesn't mean all hope is lost. In fact, thanks to their tradable draft capital, the Lakers can make a move to acquire an impactful player anytime before February's trade deadline.

Lakers have the draft capital to make an impactful in-season trade

According to ESPN's Bobby Marks, the Lakers have three tradable first-round picks. Every first that they own from 2029-2031 can be dealt. The only caveat, though, is that their 2030 pick cannot be dealt in the same deal as their 2029 or 2031 pick. This is because of the Stepien rule, a rule inserted to prevent teams from trading all of their first-round picks.

While they can't trade all three of those in the same deal, the Lakers do have options. They can trade 2029 and 2031 in the same trade if they'd like. They also have five years of swaps available, essentially guaranteeing the team that they're trading with the better of first-round picks.

Pick swaps have become more prevalent in recent years, with the James Harden trade that sent the star guard from the Houston Rockets to the Brooklyn Nets being a prime example. The Nets sent three unprotected first-round picks as well as four unprotected first-round pick swaps to Houston. When their team was disassembled over the years, those swaps became extremely valuable. That's something that can happen with the Lakers if they choose to swap picks thanks to LeBron's age and the durability concerns surrounding Anthony Davis.

The Lakers don't have the capital at their disposal to make a trade for a player of Harden's caliber, but they do have the picks to make a meaningful addition and also have the contracts belonging to players like D'Angelo Russell and Rui Hachimura at their disposal to make the money work for most players that they'd be targeting.

While the Lakers are good enough to be a playoff team, it's become abundantly clear that they do not have the pieces to conceivably win an NBA championship without Rob Pelinka pulling off a big move to bring another high-end player to Los Angeles to play with LeBron and Anthony Davis. It's time to see Pelinka put all of his chips in to give LeBron one more big chance at title No. 5.