Lakers: Insider Expects LA To Make A Trade With Any Of These 5 Teams Before Deadline

Just because your Los Angeles Lakers arguably avoided trading for a ticking time bomb in talented-but-tempestuous All-Star point guard Kyrie Irving, doesn't mean that they're necessarily done dealing as the trade deadline approaches.

Jovan Buha of The Athletic hears that the two clubs with the best odds of securing a trade with Los Angeles now are the asset-rich Utah Jazz and Toronto Raptors. Buha does caution that conversations are in an early stage, which would suggest that there's a chance things don't get figured out in time for Thursday's midday deadline.

I've always found it interesting that teams tend to wait until the last possible second to hammer out trades. By the 20-game mark (mid-December, generally), most clubs have a pretty good sense of what they are, what they're not, and what they need. Obviously major injuries can complicate that picture. Regardless, if it's going to take time to suss out intricacies of a given transaction, and most teams are aware of that going into a negotiation, why not just start the negotiation earlier and take it easy?

Instead, we get a mad dash to finish line, and oftentimes moves that otherwise could have been made fizzle out and fall apart.

Additionally, sources inform Buha that the San Antonio Spurs, the Charlotte Hornets, and the Chicago Bulls are the other three clubs most likely to line up as solid trade partners for Los Angeles. We've talked about a lot of these deals before, and they continue to make a lot of sense.