The Lakers can’t wait any longer to trade for a center

The Lakers need a quality center to prevent their best efforts from backfiring in their faces.

There has never been a better time for the Lakers to explore trade options in order to acquire a center than right now. Brook Lopez will miss several weeks due to injury, and none of the players that Los Angeles had rumored on the trade block to start the season (Julius Randle, Jordan Clarkson) still haven’t been moved.

It remains to be seen what they could put together for someone like Anthony Davis, DeMarcus Cousins, or another star big man — but it’s possible.

Chances are, if they don’t want to dig too deep into their young core of assets they’ll have to include their second round pick in 2018 that they are in possession of via Denver. I’m not entirely too particular about who they trade for, but this whole Brook Lopez thing isn’t working out like we thought it would.

Andrew Bogut hasn’t been nearly as effective of a veteran presence as he could be, either, and outside of that the Lakers have young talent which they seem reluctant to give a good chunk of minutes at that position.

If you’re going to deplete your resources in a trade, you might as well do it now before it gets any later in the year. At the very least, they need to put a trade offer on the table to just see what the response would be from another team.

There’s numerous franchises that could use players like Randle and Clarkson, and it doesn’t seem like the Lakers are sold on them for their long-term plan of getting things back in order.

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Magic Johnson and Rob Pelinka hold the keys to any of this happening, so if they want to end up on the better side of things, they’ll make the right move for the team.