With the NBA draft finally in the rearview mirror, teams can start officially makings trades. The Los Angeles Lakers already pulled off one big deal but that doesn’t mean they’re quite done yet. It’s possible they could lose some key players in free agency and will need to replace them.
George Hill just got traded from the Milwaukee Bucks to the New Orleans Hornets as part of the Jrue Holiday deal. However, it appears his time in the Big Easy won’t last all that long. According to Gery Woelfel of Woelfel’s Pressbox, Hill will garner interest across the league and the Lakers are among the teams who could make an offer:
An Eastern Conference executive said he’s heard George Hill, whom the Bucks dealt to New Orleans on Monday, is drawing interest from a spate of title contenders, including both L.A. teams, Boston, Golden State and Miami.
Hill has spent 14 seasons in the NBA and could fit in well on the Lakers’ roster. The team needs a 3-point shooter and while Hill doesn’t shoot a lot of them, he does have a career average of slightly over 38% from three.
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Hill Has Played With LeBron James Before
If Hill gets traded to the Lakers, he’ll be reunited with former teammate LeBron James. They played together for a little less than half a season in Cleveland and made it to the NBA Finals. Hill once called LeBron “Batman” when they played together.
“We have one of the best players in the history of the game, I’m sure he’s going to dictate the tempo and things like that,” Hill said in 2018, per Dave McMenamin of ESPN. “We just got do our job, be the best role players we can possibly be. He’s the Batman, and we got to be all Robins. We got to figure it out.”
Even when LeBron left Hill to play for the Lakers, he still defended the superstar. In LeBron’s first return to Cleveland after leaving for Los Angeles, he was met with boos. Hill wasn’t happy about that.
“If you boo him, you’re an a**hole,” Hill told Jason Lloyd of The Athletic in 2018. “He just means too much to this city, to this organization.”
The two seem to have a good relationship so he’d make sense as a veteran option for the Lakers.
Hill Should Be Cheap to Obtain
Last year, Hill proved to be a solid contributor for the Bucks. However, he’s 34 and certainly on the downside of his career. If New Orleans plans to trade him, he shouldn’t be too expensive. The Pelicans already own a ton of the Lakers’ draft capital for the next few years thanks to the Anthony Davis trade so it remains to be seen what they’d want.
In 2023, the Pelicans have the right to swap picks with the Lakers in the first round. Perhaps they could just ask for that pick outright in order to trade Hill. The veteran guard isn’t too valuable at this stage in his career so if the Lakers want him, they’ll figure out how to get him.
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Lakers Showing Trade Interest in Veteran Guard: Report