Report: Lakers offered Warriors D-Lo for Klay in sign-and-trade deal Originally appeared in NBC Bay Area Sports
The Warriors reportedly had a chance to reunite with a former star player.
Before Klay Thompson accepted Signs a three-year, $50 million contract against the Dallas Mavericks on Monday, the Los Angeles Lakers – one of Thompson’s Suitors in free agency – made a strong offer to the veteran guard.
The Lakers offered Thompson a multi-year contract that would pay him roughly $20 million annually in a sign-and-trade deal with Golden State that would have sent point guard D’Angelo Russell back to the Warriors, TNT’s Chris Haynes reported Monday.
“I’m told the Lakers made a pretty attractive offer, somewhere in the three- or four-year range,” Haynes told Bleacher Report. “Around $20 million per (year) and they didn’t get their player. And obviously it was going to take a sign-and-trade, so that had nothing to do with LeBron James’ decision to take less. It was going to take a sign-and-trade to get Klay, but it just didn’t happen.”
“I was told that D’Angelo Russell would likely have been part of a deal to sign Klay and from what I was told, the Warriors were not interested in bringing D’Angelo Russell back.”
This would not have been the first time the Warriors replaced Thompson with Russell via a sign-and-trade deal. After Thompson suffered a torn ACL in the 2019 NBA Finals, Golden State completed a three-team sign-and-trade deal with the Brooklyn Nets and Minnesota Timberwolves on July 1, 2019, that sent superstar forward Kevin Durant to Brooklyn, Russell to Golden State, and Shabazz Napier, Treveon Graham, cash and a future first-round pick to Minnesota.
In his 33 games with the Warriors during the 2019–20 NBA season, Russell averaged 23.6 points, 3.7 rebounds and 6.2 assists per game on 43 percent shooting from the field and 37.4 percent from three-point range as Steph Curry’s secondary scorer with Thompson sidelined for the entire season.
The 28-year-old guard averaged 18 points, 3.1 rebounds and 6.3 assists per game on 45.6 percent shooting from the field and 41.5 percent from three-point range in 76 games with the Lakers last season.
The Warriors, clearly, weren’t interested.
