The Athletic’s Dan Woike<\/a>.<\/p>\nWoike was recently asked who the Lakers would choose between Milwaukee Bucks forward Giannis Antetokounmpo and Denver Nuggets center Nikola Joki\u0107 \u2014 under the condition that both players were available and wanted to play in Los Angeles.<\/p>\n
“I think the organization would reconsider its stance on the viability of three max players,” Woike wrote in his response. “If I had to pick, it\u2019d be Joki\u0107.”<\/p>\n
Woike received a second question revolving around Joki\u0107 and Antetokounmpo\u00a0\u2014 this time, about whether there are realistic chances of either being acquired in a trade. He quickly shut down that possibility but later clarified that anything could happen if either became a free agent.<\/p>\n
“No, not really. The market would need to be way suppressed by a player saying they would simply walk to the Lakers in free agency so 28 other teams shouldn\u2019t even consider bidding, and still the Lakers\u2019 offer would be thin,” Woike wrote. “Now, 2027 in free agency, should either Giannis or Joki\u0107 make it there, could be interesting, especially if Don\u010di\u0107 has the kind of season the Lakers expect out of him.”<\/p>\n
Last year, the Lakers finished third in the Western Conference with a 50-32 record but were upset in the first round of the playoffs by the Minnesota Timberwolves. A deeper postseason run in 2025-26 could potentially convince free agents to join the Lakers as they look to claim a second championship during the 2020s.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On Feb. 2 of this past year, the Los Angeles Lakers agreed to one of the more stunning…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":75699,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[434],"tags":[49,48,459,82],"class_list":["post-75698","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\/75698","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=75698"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75698\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/75699"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=75698"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=75698"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=75698"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}