Russell Westbrook To Los Angeles: A Trade Only The Lakers Could Pull Off

By Martin Rogers
FOX Sports Columnist

It is the kind of move that Los Angeles loves, the sort of thing that the Lakers, and perhaps only the Lakers, would have the ability to pull off and then expect it to work.

Signing Russell Westbrook in a detailed and expansive trade is as splashy and flashy a play as is likely to happen during this NBA summer, so of course, yes, it was L.A. that did it.

To borrow a phrase from baseball, it is a big swing, the kind of hack that aims not just to clear the fence but to send the ball out into the surrounding neighborhood. And it’s one that arguably the Lakers didn’t really need to make, yet did so anyway.

It might turn out to be incredibly expensive and foolhardy, but those aren’t today’s problems, not if you’re sitting in the Lakers' front office, enjoying the fact that it’s only 10 days since the championship officially passed into other hands but everyone is talking about your team again.

There are so many questions surrounding the choice to offload Kyle Kuzma, Montrezl Harrell, Kentavious Caldwell-Pope (plus a draft swap) to the Washington Wizards, all in exchange for a guy who will now be on his fourth team in four years and whose true value is a point of variable belief and sometimes heated discussion.

The simplest query is "why?" But the answer to that, from the perspective of the purple-and-gold, is the same as to all the other questions, and the same as always. "Why not?"

That’s how the Lakers roll. We didn’t see this particular trade coming, but shame on us that we didn’t. It is the most Lakers kind of trade there could possibly be, one absolutely dripping with big-name pizzazz and the packing of another healthy helping of ego into a locker room that has hosted some mighty ones over the years.

Were we really supposed to think those other trade rumors were going to be the ones to get over the line? That the Lakers were going to wheel and deal and pitch their tent for Buddy Hield, the Sacramento Kings’ energetic and earnest youngster? It could have happened, but once Westbrook emerged as a possibility, there was no way they were going to let that opportunity pass itself by.

"About two weeks ago, Russell Westbrook went to LeBron James’ home and together they and Anthony Davis had a conversation about the All-Star guard joining James and Davis on the Lakers," wrote the Los Angeles Times’ Broderick Turner.

"They talked about putting their egos aside and playing as one in their quest to bring the Lakers another NBA championship."

Have we ever heard that before? Hmm, what could possibly go wrong?

There is a lot about this that we can’t pretend to know and that will be impossible to guess at, because to work out how a combination of James, Westbrook and Davis might look is also to imagine the deceptive means opposing head coaches will conjure up to thwart them, and that’s a level of complexity that’s beyond us here. And, of course, if they’ll all be able to get along.

It is possible to see this going both ways, but no matter which way it does, it won’t be quiet. If the Lakers start winning and this pieced-together trio starts to shine, there is going to be a lot of noise, a lot of sparkle and a whole lot of attention.

Who are we kidding? The attention will be there regardless, for that’s how the Lakers roll, never in the shadows, never irrelevant, their failed pursuits as much of a storyline as the times when triumph comes.

Best case, perhaps, is that Westbrook revels in the role of assist machine, delivering passes of perfection to James and Davis and bolstering a team that wasn’t particularly good at moving the ball last season.

And it is equally easy to envision an alternative scenario, because big-name combinations can fail, and do, and have here in the past. The 2012-13 season in Tinseltown, with Kobe Bryant, Pau Gasol, Dwight Howard and Steve Nash, was an unmitigated flop. Pairing Westbrook with James Harden on the 2019-20 Houston Rockets didn’t exactly pan out as planned, either.

But whatever, for the Lakers it was time to do something. The clock operates differently at Staples Center than everywhere else in that it speeds or slows depending on the present patience of a franchise that expects to win.

It had counted down to zero already. Too long out of the spotlight, even though L.A. played its final playoff game as recently as June 3. Too long since a title, even though it’s been less than a year. Too long since a blockbuster signing – even though Davis joined in the summer of 2019 and James a year before that. Time to act.

"Staples Center will be rocking," FOX Sports NBA analyst Chris Broussard said on FS1’s "First Things First." "The talent at the top of the Lakers roster is incredible. Russell Westbrook will take a physical toll off of LeBron and AD, they won’t have to carry as much of a physical burden. You’ve got to give them a puncher’s chance.

"All that said: no, I don’t like this. This is a chemistry experiment. Russ likes to play fast, LeBron likes to play slow and deliberate. Both LeBron and Russ are ball-dominant. Their Big Three can’t really shoot. Who’s going to step back? It can’t be Russell Westbrook. If Russ can’t be Russ, what’s the point of having him?"

For the Lakers, there is always a point to doing something above and beyond. They simply can’t stomach being second-best, or, indeed, as last season played out, not even at that level. The most sensible and circumspect thing to do would have been to largely stay put, hope James and Davis avoided the injury woes of the previous campaign, safe in the knowledge that if they did so the team would be among the most serious contenders.

But this is the Lakers and such thoughts don’t sit easily. The championship now rests in Milwaukee – Milwaukee of all places! – in the hands of a team with three superstars who choose not to act like them.

It is time, goes the thinking in Lakerland, to put things right. To show that big-name stars have that status for a reason. To get the news cycle back where it belongs. To shoot for the title, sure, but just as importantly, to put on a show.

The curtain just got raised.

Martin Rogers is a columnist for FOX Sports and the author of the FOX Sports Insider Newsletter. You can subscribe to the newsletter here.