Welcome to Part 5 of the pre-draft deadline Bruce Brown breakdown. If you missed the previous parts then feel free to check them out below:
Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

For Part 5, we're going to be doing something a bit different; most of the trade partners here are framed as salary relief but today's team is one of the known suitors from the trade deadline who were interested in Bruce Brown.

Los Angeles Lakers

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Most likely player(s): Jarred Vanderbilt, Gabe Vincent, Jalen Hood-Schifino

Incoming salary: $21.7 million to $25.5 million (Net of -$1.2 million; if JHS is included, trade exception would be used to absorb incoming salary)

Pick(s) available: 17th, 55th pick in the 2024 draft, very distant future 1st

For the purposes of this latest addition to the "Bruce Brown trade talk saga™", i'm just going to ignore the "will they, won't they" factor of Bronny and whether him being drafted by the Suns, 76ers or whomever before the Lakers can/if the Lakers are willing to at 17 might cause LeBron to leave. Frankly, the fact that there's been so much discussion about a player who would go undrafted if he wasn't related to one of the all-time best basketball players is annoying and it's lowkey disrespectful that more deserving players in this draft aren't getting anywhere near the same attention due to LeCircus Show that is accounting for James' free agency decision. It's also not fair to Bronny but that's a discussion for another day.

Also if we're being honest, the Lakers should either be building the team around Anthony Davis as their #1 option or just blowing it up and admitting they messed up when they traded as much as they did in personnel to acquire Russell Westbrook/let go of that 2020 championship core i.e. Alex Caruso walked in free agency, regardless of what one thinks about the circumstances that led to that championship banner. Whatever decisions the Lakers make, they should be doing it irrespective of LeBron, and that includes improving the roster, whether it be making a move for a star or marginal moves to upgrade the supporting cast.

What we will be talking about is….this has to be the most viable year for a Lakers/Raptors trade to happen, right? At least for this incarnation of both teams with L.A. looking to retool their roster for one, maybe two years left with LeBron/before they have to definitively pivot to this being Anthony Davis' team and the Raptors being in the midst of a retool around Scottie Barnes.

Things were a bit different back in 2022 where there was a rather infamous 3-team deal between the Knicks, Lakers and Raptors; Toronto was looking to trade Goran Dragic for, among other players in the deal, Nerlens Noel and Talen Horton-Tucker. The specifics aren't entirely clear because there were several different structures that were proposed (There was allegedly a variant of this deal involving then-recently signed Khem Birch and Chris Boucher who was a pending free agent for the upcoming offseason) but what's known is that the deal fell through to draft compensation and thus the Raptors went with the infamous Thad Young trade which, post-Koloko being waived, amounted to nothing.

One of the deals that were reportedly discussed at the time between the trio of front offices; the deal ultimately fell through

Fast forward to 2024 and the Lakers yet again found their team's name in trade rumors and reports of talks in Toronto's trade deadline dealings; their name came out a ton during the Siakam sweepstakes and after the Raptors received Bruce Brown as part of the Pacers package, L.A.'s name was one of the two most common teams that came up amongst reporters covering the fate of Bruce Brown, albeit they lacked the 1st round pick that Toronto's front office purportedly preferred and the deadline passed with L.A. making neither fellow trade target Dejounte Murray nor Bruce on the Lakers to bolster their roster.

I bring these up because, historically, talks like these – where teams have a general concept for a deal that falls apart before it crosses the finish line – have been used as a foundation for trades that do get finalized in future deals or they become the basis for other potential roster moves.

For a recent example, the 2023 trade deadline saw the Raptors showed interest in trading for Hornets forward Jalen McDaniels. Lo and behold, the Raptors would go on to sign McDaniels with the BAE in the 2023 offseason, albeit that signing somehow managed to be a $4 million dollar mistake in hindsight.

All this is to say that while most of these teams in this series have been focused on taking on bad money to either move up or get a 2nd 1st in the draft, the Lakers are the one team in this series where there's been explicit interest in Bruce Brown for the quality roleplayer that he is, albeit the obvious filler in D'Angelo Russell that was originally dangled at the deadline is no longer an option; he's a pending free agent (via a player option he's almost certainly declining) who'll likely leave L.A. for one final payday and though he can't be entirely ruled out, the odds of him being the main salary in a Raptors/Lakers trade are about as slim as the odds of him making a 3-pointer against the Nuggets in the 2023 Conference Finals (It was 13%, don't worry you don't need to Google it).

This makes the Lakers a peculiar partner post-deadline. Not to say that they're wholly asset-deprived – they recently got back their 2024 draft pick via the 17th for this year – but even ignoring them potentially using what little they have to go star chasing as an alternative, they're pretty limited in terms of how they can structure such a deal.

To make the money work (and to make a deal that makes sense since trading Rui for Brown doesn't make a ton of sense for the Lakers since his salary along with Bruce could allow for that star level trade they may pursue in addition to a bench upgrade – at least when Brown becomes eligible to be combined in a trade though a 3/4-team trade involving him in said trade is also viable), Gabe Vincent is by default a requirement, and a poor one at that.

It's hard to call a guy making MLE money a bad contract but Gabe is just about the closest answer you can find to a question that no one asked. Like the aforementioned McDaniels signing, just about everything that could go wrong has gone awry though Vincent might be the one signing that tops it in terms of true terror, as his Lakers season was truly horrendous.

Embarrassing in their lack of availability, unable to hit those 3s that defined that legendary Heat playoff performance in the 11 games he did play in the regular season with L.A. and equally dreadful in the playoffs where his season 3-point percentage of 10.7% (!) on 2.5 attempts per game only marginally improved to 14% on even fewer attempts, Vincent is a contender for the worst free agent signing of the 2023 offseason despite initial praise due to his previously pristine postseason performance with the Miami Heat and prying him away from them.

There's this saying in amongst NBA scouts that goes something like "If Miami is letting a role player walk, there's a reason for that so don't sign them". The TL;DR is that there's a notorious history of Miami's roleplayers severely underperforming with their new team or, if one prefers to frame it in praise for the Heat, overperformed with their old one as Erik Spoelstra gets said players to do the basketball equivalent of punching above their weight class.Put another way, his contract is there to make the money work and you shouldn't expect Gabe to bounce back to his runner-up for the then-recent Eastern Conference Finals MVP award status (he lost by one vote to Jimmy Butler) and hero for their Cinderella Finals run.

While the same can't be said for the other semi-required salary via Jarred Vanderbilt, the young forward is no longer the promising player he seem poised to build upon. Vando is not a bad player – i'd argue he's the type of player the Raptors should be looking to pick up in this offseason – but…well i'll put it like this: There's a reason the Timberwolves traded him in the Gobert trade and not Jaden McDaniels.

Vanderbilt is a very good defender. He's not some otherworldly DPoY candidate – if he was, the Lakers wouldn't consider him available in trade talks of course – but the 25 year old is relentless at the point of attack and highly switchable. He isn't quite able to guard 1 thru 5 but the 6'8 forward's defensive impact is noteworthy in all the right ways; of the Lakers 2023/24 roster, Jarred boasted the highest (technically lowest but this is a case where lower is better) defensive rating, with an average of 109.4 when he was on the floor.

The problem is his offense.

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He's not much of a slasher and, being as charitable as possible, there is a lot of work that needs to be done on the 3 part of "3 and D wing" archetype that Vando should theoretically be. His lack of offensive presence was part of why his minutes dipped during the Lakers previous two playoffs runs with him. His defense is great but it's not good enough to outweigh how little scoring presence he has. He can't even be relied upon to his his free throws if he's hacked in the final stretch of a close game since he's shot below 65% from the line for his entire career.

He doesn't have an outside shot, he's not good at creating for himself or his teammates, he's simply a liability on that end of the floor. It's not impossible that he improves as a shooter but at this point, Jarred may simply be what he currently is: A capable defender who can give you some good minutes off the bench but should only start if one's team is in a pinch and only putting up 3s in a moment of desperation.

So that's one flawed player best suited to bench minutes and an overpaid, borderline unplayable mess who one will only be playing in the hopes of trying to recoup what value one could possibly salvage from a Floridian shipwreck off the coast. It is understandably underwhelming as a return and whether one ends up moving up to 17 or receiving the Lakers 1st outright, neither does all that much to improve first impressions.

As an alternative, the Lakers could forgo direct draft capital and instead include a recent draft selection in rookie guard Jalen Hood-Schifino. JHS was someone I briefly mentioned as part of last year's draft since his name was among the more common to come out of the rumor mill, most notably as a Fred VanVleet replacement. He was not someone I had any confidence in him taking on that role because of some serious red flags such as his terrible finishing at the rim and ultimately, the team selected Gradey Dick 13th overall.

Since being drafted by the Lakers (at 17th, coincidentally), the 6'6 combo guard has been a mainstay of the Lakers garbage time minutes; he's averaged a measly 5 minutes across 21 games, so it's hard to truly evaluate him as a prospect. That said, it is hard to ignore that L.A. missed out on the far more promising Brandin Podziemski who was picked shortly afterwards and the more NBA ready rookie that was Jaime Jaquez Jr. to help them win now, both of whom contributed far more to their respective team's success than Jalen did.

He's only ever received notable playtime in L.A.'s G League affiliate and while his stats should be taken with a grain of salt i.e. free throw shooting in the G League is a bit different than it is in the NBA, there are some highlights such as him shooting 43% on about 5 attempts per game and boasting an overall true shooting of 65.2%. Jalen is in that awkward No Man's Land for a young prospect where he's young enough to be seen as a potential rotation or starter piece for a team but as of right now, he's unproven in the NBA, unable to be trusted to contribute now, unable to get the minutes needed to develop given the Lakers are looking to contender and overall lacking in value on his own to improve his current team's roster as the centerpiece of a trade, whether it's part of a star trade or getting some veteran help.

So yeah, the Lakers and Bruce Brown. In terms of the outline for a trade package, it's far from the worst one out there and there may be a deal to be had to unite the two given where both of their teams are but i'd be lying if I said that they're a lot less interesting than the last few partners we've talked about.

Conclusion

Here's our TL;DR so far:

There's one final team that demands a lengthy piece in this Bruce Brown breakdown series – and coincidentally they just so happened to be a team that made a blockbuster trade with the Lakers a few years ago.

Also some honorable mentions for teams where there isn't as much to say about them individually.

Until next time, game on, my friends!