The Los Angeles Lakers didn’t make any big moves at the NBA trade deadline last week, but as we get further from last Thursday, it’s starting to look like waiting to play the buyout market was the correct course of action. According to some of the latest reporting on Kyle Lowry suggests he wasn’t all that thrilled to join the Lakers, preferring to go to the Miami Heat if he was going to get traded.
The Ringer’s Kevin O’Connor reported that Lowry’s friendship with Heat star Jimmy Butler is what tipped the scales in Miami’s favor. However, Lowry didn’t go anywhere and will finish the season with the Raptors.
While Lowry’s resume is long and he would have been an upgrade for the Lakers, the cost of the upgrade may have been too much on top of the fact that he probably wasn’t thrilled to come to L.A. Losing players like Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, Montrezl Harrell or Dennis Schröder, would have been critical to their hopes as much as Lowry would have helped their star power.
Now they were able to add Andre Drummond into the fold and didn’t have to give any of the above players up.
