Jake Fischer<\/a> later reported in the Stein Line newsletter that the Lakers are among teams “preparing interest” in the Denver Nuggets’ Peyton Watson.<\/p>\nThe Lakers lead the Pacific Division with a 28-17 record, but they rank fifth overall in the Western Conference. If they hope to cement their place as title contenders this season, they will need some roster improvements around stars Luka Doncic and LeBron James.<\/p>\n
Hunter, DiVincenzo, Marshall and Ellis are all 3-and-D wings known for their abilities to contribute on both ends of the floor. Marshall was also a teammate of Doncic’s when he was with the Dallas Mavericks, and that familiarity could push the Lakers to pursue him a little more aggressively.<\/p>\n
It was also noted that the Lakers “have shown some interest in” trading for wings Trey Murphy III or Herbert Jones from the New Orleans Pelicans, but many around the NBA “say the asking price is so high that teams are waiting to see if that comes down by the deadline next week.”<\/p>\n
NBA executives and scouts told Turner and Nguyen that Lakers forward Rui Hachimura “is a name that comes up often as a tradeable player” thanks to his expiring $18 million contract. Hachimura is coming off a 23-point performance in Monday’s win over the Chicago Bulls, and his recent surge reportedly has “increased his trade value around the league, but it also has made the forward a very valuable player for the Lakers.”<\/p>\n
Fischer also noted the Lakers have “shown a willingness” to include Hachimura in a trade.<\/p>\n
Everything will come to a head when the trade deadline arrives next week, and many eyes will be on the Lakers to see how they address their roster deficiencies for the home stretch of the regular season.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As the Feb. 5 trade deadline quickly approaches, the Los Angeles Lakers are reportedly eyeing multiple players who…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":439371,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[434],"tags":[49,48,459,82],"class_list":["post-439370","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\/439370","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=439370"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/439370\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/439371"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=439370"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=439370"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=439370"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}