After trading away Russell Westbrook before the beginning of the 2020-21 NBA season and after trading away James Harden in January, the Rockets seem to be willing to deal anybody on their roster for the right price. With him being 35-years old and owed $7.9M in the final year of his contract this season, PJ Tucker could be the next player to be traded for the Rockets. 

While they are already a championship roster and do not need to make any more moves to prove that, the Los Angeles Lakers are a team who could be interested in trading for and targeting the veteran big man before the NBA trade deadline this season. Anthony Davis and LeBron James are enough to win a title as they showed in the NBA Bubble but they do already have more.

With LeBron James continuing to play at a high-level and with other high-level talents in Anthony Davis, Dennis Schroder and Montrezl Harrell, there is no reason why this team should not make the NBA Finals again and acquiring PJ Tucker would reinforce this idea. 

While they had JaVale McGee and Dwight Howard to reinforce Anthony Davis in the frontcourt last year, the Lakers have Montrezl Harrell and Marc Gasol this season, which seems like an upgrade, but Gasol has been a disappointment. He is not productive at all on the court for Los Angeles and seems to get in foul trouble a lot, which is hurting the Lakers defensively.

Acquiring PJ Tucker solves a lot of these problems the defending champions have and could be the extra move that needs to be made that separates the Lakers from other title contenders like the Bucks, Nets and 76ers in the Eastern Conference. Let’s take a look at three reasons why the Lakers could go all-out to trade for PJ Tucker.