Tony Jones<\/a>, Kessler and the Jazz “will not reach an agreement on a rookie-scale contract extension.” That puts Kessler on course to reach restricted free agency during the 2026 NBA offseason, and potentially makes Utah more willing to talk trades now that there’s some level of risk that he’d leave.<\/p>\nThen again, the fact it’s only restricted free agency greatly reduces that risk. The Jazz could match any offer sheet he signs. Or maybe they’ll just pay him themselves, as they “highly value [him] and see him as a cornerstone to the future,” according to Jones.<\/p>\n
In other words, if the Lakers were hoping this development might cut into what’s sure to be an astronomic asking price from the Jazz, that isn’t happening.<\/p>\n
And that’s part of the reason L.A. should just forget about this possibility. Because while Kessler would be a fun with with Luka Don\u010di\u0107, there’s still only so much a modern NBA team can justify paying for an interior big man. Kessler makes a lot of things happen around the rim, but he loses much of his utility when he steps away from it.<\/p>\n
He’s a support piece. He just might happen to be priced more like a centerpiece.<\/p>\n
The Lakers don’t need to break the bank like that.<\/p>\n
Center was a major worry coming into the offseason, but this front office did well to fill that void with Deandre Ayton.<\/p>\n
While he’s had some up-and-down moments, he has also averaged a double-double in every season since being made the top pick of the 2018 draft (the same class as Don\u010di\u0107). Ayton has also been the starting center and a featured scorer on an NBA Finals team (the 2020-21 Phoenix Suns), so he’s clearly capable of impacting winning.<\/p>\n
Will his game be a hand-in-glove fit with Don\u010di\u0107, LeBron James and Austin Reaves? It’s too early to tell, but that’s kind of why it’d be asinine for L.A. to already be exploring alternatives (particularly those of the budget-busting variety).<\/p>\n
The Lakers should be doing what they can to get Ayton comfortable and hopefully off to a smooth start. Getting caught up in a new round of trade winds with Kessler would put unnecessary pressure on their new big man.<\/p>\n
L.A. doesn’t have to ditch its Kessler dream forever\u2014although if Ayton performs well, what’d be the point of holding onto it?\u2014but this clearly isn’t the time to rush to get him onboard. If Ayton struggles to mesh with this squad, the Lakers can always circle back to Kessler closer to the deadline or even during restricted free agency next summer.<\/p>\n
Hopefully, his acquisition price will be a lot more reasonable by then.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Utah Jazz center Walker Kessler, perhaps the most-cited Los Angeles Lakers’ trade target of late, just saw an…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":173277,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[434],"tags":[49,48,459,82],"class_list":["post-173276","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-nba","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173276","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=173276"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173276\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/173277"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=173276"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=173276"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=173276"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}