Los Angeles Lakers Would Be Smart to Trade Pau Gasol

Pau Gasol is the epitome of a team player. He is a pure class act in every sense of the word and would be an asset to every team in the league.

Which is exactly why the Los Angeles Lakers need to trade him as soon as possible.

Simply put, the Lakers season, for all intents and purposes, is over. After losing 110-97 to the Dallas Mavericks on Tuesday night, the Lakers have now dropped eight of their last 10 games. You can watch the full highlights below:



The Lakers also fell to six games back of the eighth seed in the Western Conference. In comparison, they are just 2.5 games ahead of the Sacramento Kings, the team with the worst record in the West.

Any chance of the team competing for a playoff spot and making noise once they get there continues to fade into the distance with each new player that goes down with an injury.

Kobe Bryant and Steve Nash have played in just 12 combined games this year. Nash's backups at point guard—Jordan Farmar and Steve Blake—have each missed over a dozen games. It has gotten so bad for the team's backcourt, that they signed Kendall Marshall off the streets to start at point guard for them, and he has averaged over 37 minutes per game. 

As sportwriter Jeff Grant mentioned, the Lakers have used 18 different starting lineups this season thanks to a litany of injuries.



For this season, the best-case scenario for the Lakers would be getting everyone healthy and gelling in time to snag one of the last playoff seeds in the Western Conference.

However, that would in turn be the worst-case scenario for the future of the franchise.

The reality is even with a fully healthy team, the Lakers aren't going to win a championship this year. Making the playoffs for some franchises may be seen as a success, but when you have 16 championships your goal shouldn't be just to get there.

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