Skip Bayless: Lakers Should Trade Russell Westbrook for John Wall
The Los Angeles Lakers are almost certainly stuck with Russell Westbrook. The 33-year-old guard's massive contract and diminishing performance on the court have LA in a terrible situation. Skip Bayless thinks he's found a way out of it though.
On Tuesday's episode of Undisputed, Bayless proposed a trade to shake things up for the Lakers. He believes they should trade Westbrook to the Houston Rockets in exchange for John Wall.
Can the Lakers trade Westbrook before Thursday's deadline?
— UNDISPUTED (@undisputed) February 8, 2022
"You're stuck with Westbrook, but have one safety valve and that's in Houston. John Wall is less of a liability than Russ. LeBron and AD have a better shot with Wall than with 0 rings playing." — @RealSkipBayless pic.twitter.com/CqFM833KOz
Bayless essentially says this would be addition by subtraction for the Lakers. If they wanted they could just stuff Wall on the bench and forget about him. Which might make some sense, since Wall has only played 40 games in the last three seasons and has sat out the entirety of the 2021-22 campaign.
When Wall did play for the Rockets during the 2020-21 season, he averaged 20.6 points, 6.9 assists, 3.2 rebounds and 1.1 steals in 32.2 minutes per game. While those are decent counting stats, hie PER was a career-worst 15.46, and his usage rate ballooned to a career-high 32.0 on an awful Houston team.
Wall possesses a player option worth $47.4 million for the 2022-23 campaign, while Westbrook has one worth $47.1 million. So the math works out with two of the NBA's worst contracts.
If this kind of a deal sounds familiar, that's because it's happened before. The Rockets and Washington Wizards swapped these two terrible contracts during the 2020-21 season already.