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During Wednesday morning‘s First Take on ESPN, Stephen A. Smith offered his opinion that the Lakers should consider trading LeBron James this offseason.
J.J. Redick did not agree with this “crazy take,” as he called it, and said it would go against the Lakers’ longtime organizational behavior of building around superstars.
“First thing to that, [trading James] would go against of decades of behavior upon the Lakers part,” Redick said. “They are a superstar driven franchise. Secondly, to trade LeBron somewhere like Utah or Portland would go against that behavior as well. Because there’s no way they would ever trade LeBron unless they got sign off from him. There’s no way they would ever trade LeBron because it goes against how they operate.”
Redick added that many teams in the league would not be willing to trade their young players for James, in essence mortgaging the future for the 37-year-old.
“If you’re a team looking to trade for LeBron James, and you’re going to give up all of your young players, like Miami, Bam Adebayo?” Redick said. “You think that getting LeBron James and giving up Bam makes Miami closer to winning a championship? No.”
The former NBA guard emphasized that these teams with young rosters needed to build up a package worthy of trading for James are the same teams unlikely to acquire older superstars in lieu of prioritizing the future of the team.
“Everything you’re talking about is teams essentially operating the way the Lakers have operated for decades,” Redick said. “Team don’t want to operate that way anymore, and that’s the problem with the Lakers. They have refused to modernize how they operate.”
Redick added that the Lakers reportedly hiring former Los Angeles coach Phil Jackson to assist in their search to replace Frank Vogel reiterates this idea of the franchise sticking to their old ways.
The Lakers have not expressed a desire to trade James this offseason.
