Trade grades for the Lakers and Nets: D'Angelo Russell and Dorian Finney-Smith swapped

The Los Angeles Lakers and Brooklyn Nets made a move Sunday afternoon! LA traded three second-round picks, mercurial point guard D’Angelo Russell, and seldom-used deep bench piece Maxwell Lewis for 3-and-Der Dorian Finney-Smith and bench scorer Shake Milton. I like it for both sides… with one very important caveat.

Brooklyn Nets

Finney-Smith is a solid role player who picked a great time to have a career-best year shooting the three-ball. Shake Milton was a rotational afterthought until December; while he’s played well off the bench, he’s not the kind of piece a rebuilding team is looking to utilize. He, too, picked a fine time to start balling out. We’ll talk more about them below.

Three seconds is about what I would’ve expected for Finney-Smith alone, but the intriguing thing is Russell's return. Russell is far from a useless player, but his wet-noodle defense and pining for a more significant role make him a poor fit on many teams. He returns to Brooklyn, the site of his lone All-Star selection in 2019, in a state of limbo. The Nets may use him to provide some structure to their offense, as they’re now down two guards after the trade of Dennis Schroder to the Warriors, but they’ll undoubtedly sniff around to see if they can flip Russell for more seconds.

On paper, Russell still possesses valuable shooting and playmaking. While he’s shot just 33% from deep this season, he’s been much better than that over the last two seasons, and he’s capable both on the catch and off the bounce. The shot selection can be worrisome, but an engaged and motivated Russell is still a strong pick-and-roll passer. If he’s willing to continue in the bench role he had assumed for LA, a scoring-desperate team (the Magic?) may make a play for him.

Although I’m not blown away, I certainly don’t hate this return for Brooklyn. DFS was not likely to fetch a real first (the Memphis pick, which was reported after I initially published this, sounds like it would’ve been heavily protected, but perhaps I am wrong in this assessment), so this feels like a reasonable bet that Russell can provide more draft equity. Even if he doesn’t, he’s an unrestricted free agent who will have no bearing on the team’s financial future if they choose to part ways in the offseason, and I don’t think he’s good enough to steal this team too many wins it doesn’t want in the meanwhile.

Grade: B

Los Angeles Lakers

Let’s move on to the meaty part. DFS is a nice get for Los Angeles, but not for the reasons people expect.