4 LA Lakers Trade Targets for Coming Season

The Los Angeles Lakers have made a couple of key additions this offseason in Marcus Smart in the backcourt and Deandre Ayton to pick up the starter's job in the pivot. But many are still figuring there's one more big move up their sleeve this season to make themselves into a true championship contender.

As noted by Rohan Brahmbhatt in Clutch Points, the Western Conference is loaded with top-notch teams, including of course the defending champs, the Oklahoma City Thunder, along with Nikola Jokic and the Denver Nuggets and the back-to-back Western Conference Finalists, the Minnesota Timberwolves.

He says the Lakers should be keeping these two trade targets on their radar when they're ready to make their move:

Will the Lakers try to add Dejounte Murray to their backcourt?

The Pelicans were an absolute disaster last season, and who knows what they'll be up to this year? Is Murray a building block for New Orleans, or will they look to move him? As Brahmbhatt writes, he "is under constant watch around the league". The Lakers' interest in Murray has cropped up at times over the past couple of years, and he'd be an ideal fit for a stout perimeter defender to add to the Luka Doncic, Austin Reaves, Smart mix.

Could Lauri Markkanen be a trade target for Lakers this season?

His name has been in the rumor mill seemingly ever since he arrived in Utah. Even after the Jazz signed him to a four-year, $196 million extension that only kicks in this coming season. If there's one thing the Lakers need that Murray doesn't necessarily provide, is a floor spacer who can stretch defenses to give LeBron James and Luka more room to operate. Markkanen would solve that. "With Markkanen on the floor, defenses would be forced to guard all five positions honestly, creating a level of balance the Lakers haven’t enjoyed in years," writes Brahmbhatt.

Of course, it would take a massive package of talent and draft capital for Jazz CEO Danny Ainge to part with Markkanen, and just how the Lakers would pull that off is another question entirely.

It would be difficult for LA to find the means to pull either of those off, so we'll instead harken back to another couple of trade suggestions made earlier this summer for the Lakers. ESPN proposed these realistic targets:

Grayson Allen and Sam Hauser could be realistic trade targets for Lakers

"The Lakers probably could acquire players such as Grayson Allen (10th) and Sam Hauser (12th) in trades without too much fuss if they wanted."

Both players are just the kind of complementary floor spacers the Lakers could really use to surround Luka and LeBron. Both players have, at times this summer, been mentioned as trade chips for their teams, the Phoenix Suns (Allen) and the Boston Celtics (Hauser).

The Lakers are still a piece short, by all accounts, to make a real championship run, so we'll be keeping an eye on all these players among the targets they'll be looking at this season.