Lakers trade grades: L.A. gets needed shooting by landing Luke Kennard
The Lakers did the best they could at the 2026 NBA trade deadline given their meager asset pool
By
Sam Quinn
•
4 min read
Last year, the Los Angeles Lakers landed Luka Dončić at the NBA's trade deadline. The odds were always against them pulling off something similar at this year's deadline. They had only one first-round and one second-round pick to trade, in addition to a few first-round swaps. They are also set for significant cap space in the offseason, and seemingly didn't want to to disturb that space by taking on any long-term money.
Their deadline was always going to be understated, limited in all likelihood to a move or two on the margins. And that's what we just got. According to ESPN, the Lakers have traded Gabe Vincent and a 2032 second-round pick to the Atlanta Hawks for sharpshooter Luke Kennard. With no second-round picks remaining, the Lakers are now largely out of ammunition to make significant additions. In other words, they likely have their team for the rest of the 2025-26 season and the playoffs. So let's grade the deal for both sides.
Lakers: C+
Common sense dictated that the ideal way for the Lakers to spend this deadline cycle would have been improving their No. 24-ranked defense. Given their limited assets, though, doing so would have been impossible. If they were only trading a second-round pick, trading for defense would have amounted to putting lipstick on a pig. This team has no rim-protection. Its wings aren't good enough. Its three best offensive players are defensive negatives. The Lakers were never fixing this deadline with one second-round pick in a single deadline, and the sort of long-term difference-makers that might've been worth a first-round pick just weren't available in this cycle.
So with that said... I understand the idea of leaning all the way into offense. Why not? It's the only way the Lakers are going to win, and it isn't nearly as good as it needs to be. Even with Dončić, LeBron James and Austin Reaves, the Lakers rank just ninth on offense. Yes, injuries are a part of that, but lineups featuring all three are scoring in the 20th percentile in terms of offensive efficiency among all lineups, according to Cleaning the Glass. Most of that is due to nonexistent offensive rebounding and too many turnovers, but shooting is a persistent problem for the Lakers.
If the season ended today, the Lakers would set a new NBA record for 2-point field goal percentage. The lead the NBA in free-throw rate by a margin that's the equivalent between second-place and ninth. But again, their offense is only good, not great, and shooting is a big reason for that. JJ Redick had visions of shooting 50 3s a game when he took this job. Yet the Lakers rank just 19th in 3-point attempt rate and 21st in 3-point percentage. If this team is going to be the offensive monster it hoped to be, it needed a quick injection of shooting. The Lakers hoped Dalton Knecht could be that player when they drafted him 17th in 2024. That hasn't panned out. Kennard leads the NBA in 3-point percentage this season. He's done so in two other seasons in his career, and 62.1% of his shots come from deep. The Lakers needed someone like this.
And hey, sometimes a coach needs to be saved from himself when it comes to a favored role player. Vincent played too much. It's not exactly Redick's fault. His other options weren't exactly great. But his size was becoming a major problem on defense and his inability to do much of anything inside of the arc didn't help on offense either. The Lakers turned a player who wasn't really helping them into one who might. It's not franchise-altering, but for a single second-round pick and without taking on any long-term money, it's a reasonable bit of business.
Hawks: C+
Atlanta is doing what a Play-In Tournament team probably should be doing: turning players who aren't pieces of the long-term core into draft picks. If the Hawks weren't going to re-sign Kennard after the season, and the addition of Corey Kispert suggested they weren't, getting a second-round pick for him now is a reasonable move. The cap mechanics of the move also make a lot of sense for Atlanta. The Hawks are acquiring Vincent with a $13.1 million trade exception that expired Thursday. In the process, that allowed them to create a new $11 million trade exception for Kennard that will last another year. They effectively bought themselves time to use that exception if they want.
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Still, the Hawks have offloaded quite a bit of shooting at this deadline between Kennard and Vit Krejčí. I suppose the team wanted to clear some extra minutes for the newly acquired Jonathan Kuminga, but given the complete lack of shooting the Hawks have gotten out of Dyson Daniels, having Kennard around the space the floor a bit as they evaluate Kuminga might've been helpful. It's not the end of the world. Maybe Buddy Hield, acquired in the Kuminga deal, can occupy that same role, though he's been a far worse shooter than Kennard lately. The point of the Kuminga trade was to figure out if he'd look better under more favorable conditions than he had in Golden State, and cutting into the shooting around him doesn't exactly help on that front. Still a reasonable trade, just not a major win.
