The Los Angeles Lakers saw themselves once again fall behind their arch-rival Boston Celtics for the most NBA championships in league history, after the Celtics won their 18th in the 2023-2024 season. But in the 2024-2025 season, the Lakers knew that they had to make some drastic changes â that merely the presence of Lebron James, despite amazingly playing MVP-level basketball at age 40, would not be enough.
At the beginning of February, the Lakers and Dallas Mavericks stunned the NBA â and the sports world overall â with a sudden swap of superstars. The Lakers shipped out power forward Anthony Davis and brought in generational scoring star Luka Doncic.
The jaw-dropping trade seemed to have the desired effect. Shortly after Doncic weaved his way into the Laker starting five, the team went on an eight-game winning streak, soaring all the way up to the No. 2 seed in the Western Conference. Behind the future Hall of Fame combo of James and Doncic, the Lakers felt like a team that could legitimately challenge for an NBA championship.
Celtics Once Again Stand in Lakers’ Way
And then they faced the Celtics. The defending champions made quick work of the Lakers’ winning streak, taking away a 111-101 victory despite 34 points from Doncic and another 22 from James.
To make matters worse for Los Angeles, James departed the game with a groin injury with 6:44 remaining in the fourth quarter. The all-time NBA points leader (41,995) missed the next seven games.
The Lakers heading into Saturday’s matchup with the Memphis Grizzlies, have now lost eight of their last 12 games, and dropped to a tie with Memphis for the fourth seed, only two games ahead of the play-in bracket.
So what will the Lakers do to get even better? This season, there is not much they can do. But over the summer and as they attack the 2025-2026 campaign, another future Hall of Famer appears likely to become available on the trade market and not surprisingly, the Lakers have been linked to a deal to get him.
That player, of course, is the NBA’s eighth-leading all-time scorer (30,560) Kevin Durant. Now playing for his fourth team, the Phoenix Suns, the 36-year-old Durant will be in the final season of a four-year, $194.2 million contract that he signed as a member of the Brooklyn Nets.
5-Player Package Would be Required For Durant
While skeptical that the Lakers would be able to pull off such a deal, correspondent Jovan Buha of The Athletic outlined what, in his view, it would take to bring Durant to Los Angeles forming an all-Hall of Fame “Big Three” together with James and Doncic.
“For the Lakers, a hypothetical trade for Kevin Durant would have to be something like Austin [Reaves], Rui [Hachimura], Dalton [Knecht], Gabe [Vincent], Maxi [Kleber], a pick, and a couple pick swaps. That’s a lot,” Buha said on his podcast. “The Lakers are basically giving up everything that they could trade. For KD, you can make that case, but if you’re Phoenix, if you have an open bidding with at least multiple teams, you can get more than that.”
Around this year’s trade deadline in early February, multiple teams expressed interest in Durant, who does not have a no-trade clause in his contract. But according to ESPN NBA insider Brian Windhorst, the Suns will deal away Durant over the summer â to someone.
“They’re gonna trade [Durant], and he knows that,” Windhorst said, after the trade deadline had passed. “I think everybody’s intentions are crystal clear here…. They’re a second-apron team, and the player they really want to trade, Bradley Beal, has a no-trade clause.”
Dealing away Durant would clear more than $44 million in “apron space” for Phoenix.
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