Report: ‘Zero percent chance’ the Lakers trade for Zach LaVine
Based on recent reports, the Lakers, Bulls and Zach LaVine look as far apart as ever with the trade deadline approaching.
![Houston Rockets v Chicago Bulls](https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/5xh_YQ0foJnLxIFI8m-yq2vfH48=/0x0:6664x4443/1200x800/filters:focal(2637x651:3703x1717)/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/73057073/1925619170.0.jpg)
After being at the center of many of the trade rumors early in the season, it appears as unlikely as ever that Zach LaVine will end up on the Lakers this season. With LaVine’s value only falling as the year has gone on and more options presenting themselves, the Lakers’ focus has been on many places that haven’t been Chicago.
And while he’s still a popular name to throw around, the Lakers aren’t showing any signs of being interested in the wing. And this isn’t a “working silently in the shadows” type of deal. Quite the contrary.
On the latest episode of the Brian Windhorst & the Hoop Collective podcast, Windhorst himself made about as definitive a statement as you could make on this situation (h/t Tony Vega/Twitter)
“I think there is a zero percent chance of the Lakers trading for Zach LaVine. Zero. Zero.”
Boy, no mixing words there.
Realistically, all the reports have trended this direction. The Lakers have been pretty adamant they don’t view LaVine as a positive asset and would need more in a trade for him, which has pretty much made all of this a non-starter.
And if you need more sources to back that up, Dan Woike of the LA Times said this in his latest newsletter over the weekend.
The trade market for him around the league, sources say, is so rough that the thought is Chicago should have to add stuff in a LaVine trade to get off the contract.
Just from a logistics standpoint, adding more players of value to a contract as large as LaVine’s further complicates an already complicated trade as well.
This isn’t to say that some team might have enough interest in LaVine to do a deal, it just means that it doesn’t appear to be the Lakers. Their attention seems to have turned to Dejounte Murray, though that deal doesn’t feel like it’s all that much more likely right now either.
While this isn’t any sort of official nail in the coffin, it looks like a LaVine-to-Lakers deal is as dead as it ever has been.