FROM ABOVE ARTICLE:

The Los Angeles Lakers all but made it official this week: They plan to chase Giannis Antetokounmpo this summer.

They shouldn’t — and won’t — allow it to be the plan. It’s the only way the stressors they’ve willingly introduced this season will be worth it.

As the Lakers trudged through the middle of their schedule, coach JJ Redick looked for reasons why his team’s feet seemed stuck in the mud. A three-game, four-night East Coast stretch (one where his star player jetted to Slovenia for the birth of a child) zapped a ton of energy from the players and the staff. An injury to Austin Reaves shortly thereafter furthered their descent into whatever-dom.

The Lakers entered this zone more so now than any other point this season, where they’d either beat a bad team or get the doors blown off them by an equal or superior.

It was ugly. And on Jan. 22, after the LA Clippers blew out the Lakers for the second time in a month, Redick pointed to one culprit.

The present becomes inherently destabilized when the priority is so clearly tomorrow, and the Lakers, while not completely in a gap year, have their eyes on the future. They’re in position to chase a star.

When so many believed Antetokounmpo might finally be moved, the Bucks and their fans got to keep the Giannis dream alive.

“It just goes back to the human element of everything,” Redick said. “And guys are worried about their futures. And that’s what happens when you have a team full of free agents and player options.”

Only five of the 14 full-time players on the roster that night had contracts set in stone for next year. LeBron James is an unrestricted free agent. Austin Reaves has a player option he’s certain to decline. DeAndre Ayton and Marcus Smart have player options. Rui Hachimura and Jaxson Hayes will be free agents.

The Lakers’ plans from that list include Reaves and, of course, Luka Dončić. However, beyond that, no one else can be sure.

And that puts them in a bit of a strange spot.

The NBA trade deadline came and went without the Lakers being pushed off their chosen path. If maintaining cap space in summer 2026 wasn’t the top priority, it was the pressure point Rob Pelinka, new majority owner Mark Walter, governor Jeanie Buss and consultant Andrew Friedman pushed in every scenario or decision.

The Lakers landed on trading one future free agent, Gabe Vincent, for another in Luke Kennard, surrendering the only second-round pick they had to offer. They were unable to offload any other players, including Dalton Knecht, who league sources say the Lakers shopped aggressively.

Los Angeles moves off Vincent, who has disappointed since signing a free-agent contract with the Lakers in 2024.

Next will be evaluating a group of buyout candidates. Team and league sources say wing Haywood Highsmith is a player of interest, provided his knee issues are resolved. Cam Thomas, his former Nets teammate, is another more polarizing option.

Neither would affect the Lakers’ 2026 plans. And those long-term plans have to at least somewhat include an Antetokounmpo pursuit. The team will have three first-round picks available on draft night to make their best offer.

Rival scouts and executives don’t believe it’ll be enough, but the Lakers can and should try. Also, it cannot be the cornerstone of their offseason plans. And this all assumes that Antetokounmpo’s Wolf of Wall Street post on Thursday is temporary, not permanent.

THIS IS THE BIG NEWS:

The summer presents an opportunity, armed with significant cap flexibility, to start building the necessary components of a modern front office and reap early benefits. League sources say that includes significant hires to a wide range of front-office positions this summer, with the Lakers expected to model their front office after the World Series-winning Los Angeles Dodgers.

“It’s going to be scary,” one rival executive said when asked about the potential of the built-out front office the Lakers are expected to assemble.

There seems to be a clearer-eyed approach to this summer, which is different from past star pursuits. The Lakers have more cap space than any other competitive team, so they can be aggressive in acquiring players who fit their needs. The center position remains a priority, again. They could engage with restricted free agents like Denver’s Peyton Watson and Houston’s Tari Eason. And while restricted free agency comes with complications tied to offer sheets and prior teams’ rights to match, the Lakers could try to bypass those steps with draft capital in sign-and-trades.

Team sources have maintained that the Lakers won’t pursue a single pathway. That’s the luxury of their position; they can and should pursue Antetokounmpo. They can and should explore high-level role players whom they can trade draft picks for and absorb into space. They can and should look into aggressive ways to pry loose one of the top restricted free agents.

And they can and should build the kind of front office that can position the team in advantageous situations, whether for top-name stars, expensive free agents, minimum contracts or second-round picks.

Of all the moves the Lakers can make this summer, this is the one that’ll matter most.

FROM ABOVE ARTICLE:

This is the last stop in a packed Trade Deadline Series, the fifth article in less than a week. To mark a moment this important, I stepped away from the usual game-by-game rhythm, but that pause ends now. Regular coverage resumes with Warriors game observations on Sunday. Before getting into what happened at the deadline, and more importantly what didn’t, it’s worth briefly touching on last night.

The Lakers pulled off a huge comeback, beating a Philadelphia 76ers team 119–115 after Philly had won five straight. Austin Reaves looked every bit like the All-NBA–level player he was before the injury, scoring 35 points in just 25 minutes and reintroducing badly needed downhill speed to punish a Joel Embiid-anchored backline at the rim. The night came with familiar anxiety, though, as Luka Dončić exited late in the second half after grabbing his hamstring and did not return. Hopefully it’s nothing more than soreness after a heavy January workload that earned Dončić a Player of the Month award. But it didn’t look good, and at worst it could point to another prolonged absence for a Laker star.

In many ways, the game was a microcosm of why this deadline felt so polarizing. It showed both the limits of the current core and the upside if that core is modernized. A poor start exposed a slow, helpless defense that couldn’t keep the ball out of the paint and contain the drive. The turnaround came with more aggressive, agile, scrambling, fly-around units, featuring Marcus Smart, Jarred Vanderbilt, Jake LaRavia, and a rejuvenated Maxi Kleber at the five.

Iztok Franko
@iztok_franko
The Maxi Kleber game…a flashback to why he was such a unique player and a glimpse of how a mobile big could fit on this Lakers team.
Also, Austin Reaves is still very good.

This one’s free! If you enjoy nuanced, data-driven breakdowns, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Today’s highlights:

A failure to deliver, or a failure of expectations?

Big bang vs. agile clash of styles at the deadline

Waiting for Godot

Luke Kennard is a Laker: a quick profile

The buyout market: what’s next?

1-A failure to deliver, or a failure of expectations?

After the final deadline buzzer passed last night, with the Lakers making one marginal move that won’t change the big-picture outlook of this team in any meaningful way (more on Luke Kennard in the final section), the disappointment sank in, at least for me personally. Especially knowing that the move also cost them another minor asset, a second-round pick.

And after some introspection, I couldn’t quite decide where that disappointment was coming from. Was it because my own expectations, ones I’ve been openly conveying here for the past couple of months, were not met? Or was it because I failed to fully recognize that the plan to stand pat, the plan to play out this gap year and LeBron era, had been right in front of us ever since the Lakers traded for Dončić, and we simply refused to accept it?

Even with a limited asset pool, one first- and one second-round pick, along with a bunch of pick swaps and expiring contracts, failing to bring in even one future piece in what was now a third transactional window is hard for me to swallow. Especially when it comes at the expense of two playoff runs with a 26-year-old MVP candidate in his prime.

Yet, watching this team over a now sizable 50-game sample, one has to admit that the problem of building a competent defense around Dončić, Reaves, a 41-year-old James, and no game-changing defensive talent is close to unsolvable. A full remodel, rebuild is needed, and next summer will give Rob Pelinka almost as close as it gets to a clean slate and a fresh start.

2-Big bang vs. agile clash of styles at the deadline

Watching a flurry of trades go down this week, with record 67 players being moved and several teams recharging on the fly and some even committing to full teardowns, I couldn’t help but ask myself whether the right approach, the right process, for the Lakers’ rebuild is the big bang. My background is in IT and digital, where the mindset shifted years ago away from big releases and toward a more agile framework.

In simple terms:

Big bang means one massive release or transformation, high risk and high disruption.

Agile means incremental changes, iteration, flexibility, and learning as you go.

Because of the sheer velocity of moves, it was hard to fully process everything that happened this week and how the balance of assets and power was redistributed. But for me, the biggest realization was that there appears to be a clash of problem-solving styles. On one end, teams like the Thunder, Celtics, Pacers, Cavs, Spurs, and even the Timberwolves and Knicks seem to operate in a constant loop of agile, incremental changes, where even the smallest transactions are part of a larger asset play.

Iztok Franko
@iztok_franko
Pacers building a team around/with Haliburton is imo one of the best cases. Zubac, Siakam, Nembhard, Nesmith, Obi, McConnell…
Shams Charania @ShamsCharania

The Pacers are sending Bennedict Mathurin, Isaiah Jackson, two first-round picks and one second-round pick to the Clippers for Zubac and Kobe Brown, sources tell ESPN.
On the other end are teams like the Lakers, the Heat, and maybe even the Warriors, positioning themselves for the all-in big bang move, chasing the star they believe can change the trajectory of their franchise.

3-Waiting for Godot

The problem for teams waiting for the big bang, one that has now been pushed back to the next free agency, is that it increasingly starts to resemble a famous play by Irish writer Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot: A Tragicomedy in Two Acts. It is a play in which “nothing happens, twice.” As critic Vivian Mercier famously wrote, it “has achieved a theoretical impossibility — a play in which nothing happens, yet keeps audiences glued to their seats.” The problem isn’t that Godot never comes. The problem is that the characters stop living while they wait.

This sounds awfully familiar, doesn’t it?

The wait for the NBA version of Godot, Giannis Antetokounmpo, has become a high-stakes game with a very unpredictable main character and, so far, several disappointed franchises that saw their frustration and wait prolonged for at least another five months. That list includes Giannis’s home team, one of many now replenished with first-round picks and high hopes.

So the Bucks are waiting for the big move in the summer when they’ll have 3 first round picks to make a run at Giannis…sounds familiar
Bobby Marks @BobbyMarks42
Starting in the offseason, Milwaukee will have three tradable firsts available to use in a trade: 2026, 2031 and 2033.

They currently have only one (2031/2032)
If there is a franchise that has proven it can land the big fish, it’s the Lakers. Luka Dončić, LeBron James, Anthony Davis, Shaquille O’Neal, and Pau Gasol were all acquired either in free agency or via blockbuster trades, and all but the last move resulted in championship banners. And even if they don’t win the Giannis sweepstakes this summer, they can pivot, using cap space, the precious optionality Pelinka didn’t want to sacrifice, and three draft picks available for trade to land another big name, or several impact players, and build a new competitive team around Dončić and Reaves, assuming he re-signs.

The challenge with salary cap space as the main asset is that, in a way, the cap has become a Godot itself. Just at this deadline, several teams projected to have cap space next summer, like the Wizards, Jazz, and Pacers, made their so-called pre-agency moves, acquiring stars like Trae Young, Anthony Davis, Jaren Jackson Jr., and Ivica Zubac.

Yossi Gozlan
@YossiGozlan
In the past 48 hours, the Clippers, Jazz, and Wizards made big trades that eliminated their cap space.

The Lakers are the only competitive team remaining that can offer max cap space in the 2026 offseason.
1:05 PM · Feb 4, 2026 · 431K Views
95 Replies · 164 Reposts · 1.95K Likes
However this summer turns out, a year and a half after acquiring Dončić, the pressure on the Lakers to finally deliver their Godot, to make their big bang, will be far greater — precisely because there have been so few smaller bangs along the way.

4-Luke Kennard is a Laker: a quick profile

The Lakers didn’t stay completely pat at the deadline. They traded Gabe Vincent, along with a future second-round pick, to Atlanta to acquire sharpshooter Luke Kennard.

Apart from athleticism and defense, the lack of shooting was one of the bigger problems for the Lakers, and bringing in one of the best, or at least the most accurate shooters of the past five seasons will certainly help address it.

Iztok Franko
@iztok_franko
Well Lakers need shooting and they might’ve gotten the best shooter.

Of 145 shooters that have more than 1000 three-point attempts over the last 5 seasons Kennard is miles above at no.1 at 46%.

1. Luke Kennard 46.0%
…
…
2.Greyson Allen 41.6%
3.Sam Hauser 41.5%
Shams Charania @ShamsCharania
The Los Angeles Lakers are trading Gabe Vincent and a 2032 second-round pick to the Atlanta Hawks for Luke Kennard, sources tell ESPN.
7:53 AM · Feb 5, 2026 · 83.3K Views
26 Replies · 84 Reposts · 975 Likes
I think being truly elite at one element of the game, whether it’s shooting, offensive rebounding, or catching lobs, is an undervalued trait and a tactical weapon to have on a roster. And you will rarely find a player like Kennard, who has ranked in the 99th to 100th percentile as a three-point shooter over the past couple of seasons.

Source: Cleaning the Glass

Getting Kennard was a low-risk move, considering that he is replacing a player in Vincent who is almost the opposite, average to below average, but not terrible, in a lot of areas.

Kennard is a player who, in theory, should help the Lakers with both three-point accuracy and volume. They currently rank 23rd in three-point percentage and 22nd in frequency. Teams shot more threes when Kennard was on the floor throughout his career, but one of the common gripes from observers who watched him closely with the Clippers, Grizzlies, and Hawks is that he is not a high-volume shooter in the way his reputation might make you think.

That is a byproduct of Kennard often being too deferential to stars, frequently passing up good shots, and partially due to his slower shot-loading and release mechanics. Even with those limitations, having a shooter who converts at such an elite level, even at low usage and without needing a high volume of touches or shots, can do wonders for an offense with Dončić and Reaves drawing so much attention. The Lakers already had one such weapon in Rui Hachimura; now they’ve added an even better one in Kennard. The two Sams, Sam Hauser in Boston and Sam Merrill in Cleveland, are recent reminders of how elite shooters can unlock an offense and push it into top-five territory.

DARKO O-DPM, offensive impact (source: DARKO app)

The problem for the Lakers with Kennard is that shooting is literally the only thing he truly brings to the table. He is a good cutter, can shoot on the move, and operate in off-ball screening actions, which is far more valuable than being a stationary shooter, and he’s also a decent passer. But apart from that, especially on the defensive end, things get pretty rough.

Kennard has been a defensive liability throughout his career and will likely battle Dalton Knecht for the title of the worst defender on the roster, which makes it very hard to play him significant minutes in a playoff-like setting on a Lakers team that already has plenty of holes to begin with. Kennard will not help close the athleticism gap; you could even argue that replacing Vincent with him has made the Lakers slower. Overall, I think this is a move that will give JJ Redick, a movement shooter himself and a fellow Blue Devil who knows Kennard well, a nice tactical wrinkle and an extra option, but not one that makes a real difference. One could question whether a three-month rental was worth the last available second-round pick.

5-The buyout market: what’s next?

That roster reshuffling didn’t completely end when the deadline passed. The Lakers, along with several other teams, will now turn their attention to the buyout market in search of potential roster upgrades.

Cam Thomas, Khris Middleton, Pat Connaughton, Mike Conley, Lonzo Ball, Georges Niang, Kevin Love, and Kyle Anderson are among several names that could surface on an intriguing buyout market. I haven’t done a deep dive yet, but Haywood Highsmith is certainly one name I’ll be paying close attention to.

Haywood Highsmith is drawing interest from several playoff teams. Highsmith’s healthy, is playing 5-on-5, and was set to make his season debut February 11th following meniscus surgery, agent Jerry Dianis told @hoopshype.

The ex-Heat wing hasn’t played this season, but if healthy, the 29-year-old is the closest thing to the wing defender profile the Lakers need.

The @Lakers Stun the 76ers 119-115! Reaves 35 pts in his home return! Stay Tuned for the Lakers Post Game Show with @DuranSports pic.twitter.com/MZNY6tRzJp— ESPN Los Angeles (@ESPNLosAngeles) February 6, 2026

Lakers CRAZY Comeback WIN Over 76ers! Austin Reaves Goes OFF! https://t.co/cn12dUGRXo— Trevor Lane (@TrevorLane) February 6, 2026

🏀 SUNDAY'S FINAL SCORES 🏀LeBron James scores 10 straight points in the final minutes to lift the @Lakers over the 76ers! Luka Dončić: 31 PTS, 15 REB, 11 AST, 2 BLK https://t.co/WEs7MBJJLO pic.twitter.com/wl43AgaOdW— NBA (@NBA) December 8, 2025

Lakers get a big W over the 76ers 119-115 w/Luka not playing the 2nd half due to a hamstring injury. Austin Reaves lead the way in his 2nd game since returning from injury w/35pts off the bench in 25min on 12/17FG & 5/8 3ptFG. Lakers are now 15-2 in clutch situations #LakeShow pic.twitter.com/WNvqYMbg9S— Eric Sklar (@TheDukeOfSports) February 6, 2026

The Lakers open up the post-deadline stretch with a total team effort type of win, beating the Sixers 119-115. Reaves 35 pts on 12-of-17 6 reb; LeBron 17 pts 10 ast 8 tos; Rui 14 pts 7 reb; LaRavia 14 pts; Ayton 10 pts 6 reb; Smart 7 pts 5 ast; Vando 6 pts 6 reb; Maxi 4 pts 3 stl— Dave McMenamin (@mcten) February 6, 2026

Austin Reaves took over in the 4th quarter and carried the Lakers after Luka’s departure in a 119-115 win over the 76ers!Reaves: 35 Pts, 6 Reb, 2 Ast, 25 MinJames: 17 Pts, 4 Reb, 10 Ast, 8 TOsLaRavia: 14 Pts, 2 Reb, 3 StlEmbiid: 35 Pts,7 Reb,7 AstMaxey: 26 Pts,13 Ast,4 Stl pic.twitter.com/t8MxP8tiaa— NBA Updates (@Boscathe) February 6, 2026

The Lakers handle adversity in the 4th to beat the Sixers at home Austin Reaves:35 PTS6 REBS12-of-17 FG5-of-8 3PTLeBron James:17 PTS10 ASTS pic.twitter.com/xQXvGSnjSv— LakeShow (@LakeShowCP) February 6, 2026

Cam Thomas!!