For the fans who like to concoct crazy deals in the trade machine, we might be reaching their Super Bowl.
According to Fred Katz of The Athletic, the Lakers could be involved in a record-breaking SEVEN-team trade. The Suns and Rockets are the teams looking to expand the Kevin Durant trade to include the Lakers, Hawks, Nets, Warriors and Wolves.
League sources tell The Athletic that the Rockets and Suns are working on expanding the Kevin Durant trade into a deal that would involve a league-record seven teams. Other teams involved in negotiations at the moment include the Atlanta Hawks, Brooklyn Nets, Golden State Warriors, Los Angeles Lakers and Minnesota Timberwolves, league sources say.
Katz mentions that, as things stand, no new notable names have been added to any of the deals. Instead, they are connecting all the pieces in pre-existing deals, most of them being draft-night trades.
Unfortunately, this does not involve Dorian Finney-Smith going to the Rockets. In fact, the only players involved as things stand are those in the Kevin Durant trade — Jalen Green and Dillon Brooks — as well as Clint Capela and Daeqwon Plowden.
The rest of the teams involved traded draft picks and the rights to drafted players. The Lakers traded with the Wolves for the No. 36 pick that they used to select Adou Thiero from Arkansas. The Wolves acquired that pick in a trade with the Suns, who acquired that pick from the Nets.
Realistically, then, most of the teams involved in this deal owned the 36th pick at one point.
It is also unlikely that any players would be added, as that immediately complicates things. It’s possible, but for now, the reporting is that there “haven’t been many unexpected developments” so far.
Still, it could be a fun bit of trivia. The Lakers were previously part of the biggest trade in league history when the deal that brought Russell Westbrook to LA expanded to five teams. The trade that sent Klay Thompson to the Mavericks last season was a six-team deal, which is the current record.
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