Getty Former Los Angeles Lakers guard Quinn Cook.
The Los Angeles Lakers are getting further and further removed from their 2020 championship. Though it was only two years ago, it must feel like an eternity for a franchise that hasn’t sniffed a championship since that season. A big reason for the decline is that most of the players involved with that team are no longer in Los Angeles.
Some have even made the decision to go play overseas. Just recently, Dwight Howard announced that he’s going to play for Taiwan’s Taoyuan Leopards. He’ll now be joined by a former Lakers teammate from the 2020 season overseas. According to Sportando, veteran guard Quinn Cook is signing with Guangsha of the Chinese Basketball Association.
Sources: Quinn Cook to join Guangsha
Cook spent two seasons with the Lakers but won his first championship ring with the Golden State Warriors in 2018. He was most recently involved in the NBA G League with the Stockton Kings. Since he was having a tough time making an NBA roster. He’ll now get to play in a more competitive league in the CBA.
Lakers Are in Free Fall
The Lakers would love to go back to that 2019-2020 season right about now. The team was 8-2 through 10 games to start that season. This year, they are sitting at 2-8. It’s difficult to understand how a team that has LeBron James and Anthony Davis could be this bad but the Lakers have somehow made it happen.
The roster is so poorly constructed that no amount of high-end talent can cover up the issues. For a brief moment, it looked like the team might turn things around after they won back-to-back games with Russell Westbrook coming off the bench. They’ve now lost three games in a row and it’s obvious that this team isn’t winning a lot of games as presently constructed. Unless a big trade happens soon, this is going to be a long season in Los Angeles.
Lakers Playing the Waiting Game
There have been a couple of trades that the Lakers likely could’ve made by now. The most popular one involves Indiana Pacers’ Buddy Hield and Myles Turner for Westbrook and the Lakers’ 2027 and 2029 first-round picks. However, Los Angeles doesn’t want to trade those two picks for those two players. The team may have been willing to give them up for Brooklyn Nets guard Kyrie Irving in the offseason but that’s unlikely now that he’s involved in controversy.
According to Sports Illustrated’s Howard Beck, the Lakers just haven’t found a trade offer that they like yet.
“And in those discussions, when I brought up the Lakers, the pushback I was getting was they’re waiting for a specific player,” Beck said on “The Crossover NBA Show.” “That they’re not doing the Pacer deal, that they won’t do the Kyrie deal now that we for sure thought they would do a couple months ago, is an indication that the Lakers are waiting for a bigger piece to come loose that they think they can trade Westbrook and the two future firsts for.”
It’s difficult to tell which big-name player becomes available and if the Lakers have the assets to acquire them. Bradley Beal could be an interesting name to watch but the Washington Wizards will likely want more than the Lakers could offer.