Lakers Trade Rumors: Julius Randle, Jordan Clarkson, Larry Nance Jr. all on trade block

Magic Johnson and Rob Pelinka’s intentions for this upcoming summer and the future of the Los Angeles Lakers is clear: It’s superstar or bust. In order to make that happen, the Lakers will have to shed salary either currently on the books or due to be paid this offseason.

We know this. It isn’t new. What is new is the latest name added to the list of guys who could be moved: Larry Nance, Jr.

Jordan Clarkson and Julius Randle have played this season understanding that this is the case. I wrote about the possible effect this organizational stance might have on this team and over the last half-decade. Now, Nance gets to play like that, too!

The Lakers played a game last night and, honestly, it felt weird remembering that the Lakers are, in fact, a basketball team and not one of those daytime soap operas you had to watch as a kid on sick days as some kind of terrible punishment mom would unleash for merely getting sick.

Seeing as it’s an off-day again, we’re back to the drama — this time coming in the form of trade rumors.

In a pre-trade deadline primer, ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski spoke about potential buyers and sellers and listed the Lakers as both. Kind of.

Here’s what he had to say about Maginka selling:

The Los Angeles Lakers, needing to shed salary for summer free agency, had been hopeful of waiting until the end of the season to move Jordan Clarkson — owed $26 million beyond this season — but there’s a mutual desire to find something sooner than later. The Lakers have made it clear that Clarkson, Julius Randle and Larry Nance are available.

Nance is interesting in the sense that moving doesn’t help the Lakers shed much salary. So, one could assume his name would come up as either a sweetener to dump a salary or as a piece to immediately improve this roster.

Woj mentioned in that piece that the Lakers have moved on from trying to trade Luol Deng, so I’d probably lean in the direction of thinking Nance would be on the table to help improve the team now.

This trade deadline can’t come quickly enough. For now, I guess we can try to focus on basketb-… hahaha yeah that’s not happening.