With the trade deadline less than a week away, the hot stove is starting to pick up around the New Orleans Pelicans. On Friday morning, New York Post’s Marc Stein reported that the Los Angeles Clippers were examining trade routes to acquire Lonzo Ball, filling their long-standing need for a playmaking guard.
The report is the first concrete team to be linked with Ball in terms of exploring a trade at the upcoming deadline and is one of the first times the Clippers have been linked to Ball, who is in the final year of his rookie contract and is set for restricted free agency at season’s end.
The Clippers, with a well-chronicled need for a playmaking upgrade, are exploring trade routes to acquiring New Orleans' Lonzo Ball before next Thursday's NBA trade deadline, league sources say.
— Marc Stein (@TheSteinLine) March 19, 2021
In the midst of a career-best season, Ball has become a valuable player for the New Orleans Pelicans. The team itself, though, continues to struggle, dropping to 17-24 following back-to-back losses in Portland to the Trail Blazers and sit three games out of the 10th seed for a play-in spot.
Ball himself is averaging 14.2 points on 38.5% shooting from the 3-point line with 5.6 assists and 4.2 rebounds in 31.7 minutes per game this season. Since missing a stretch of games in early January with knee soreness, Ball has been a staple in the rotation for the Pelicans.
Complicating the idea of a trade, though, is the Clippers’ lack of assets following deals over the past two seasons. On top of trading for Paul George, the team also has acquired the likes of Marcus Morris and Luke Kennard, nearly completely depleting the draft capital available to trade. As Stein noted in a reply to his original tweet, a deal getting Ball back to Los Angeles would almost certainly have to be a three-team trade.
