Did the Lakers succeed with the Walker Kessler Trade?
Looking into the Walker Kessler Trade...
but it turns out:
The superpower to the Laker’s best Austin and Luka lineups: TO suppression is severely undercut with their biggest offseason work
10 players have been traded for control over 4 picks or more in the last 10 years. Sorted by basically player quality: Kevin Durant, Giannis Antetokounmpo, Anthony Davis, James Harden, Paul George, Rudy Gobert, Donovan Mitchell, Mikal Bridges, Desmond Bane, Dejounte Murray.
It’s funny or perhaps all but too logical that the success of these trades can be seen almost as a sliding scale: the most successful 4+ pick trades have the best of players being traded to them and the worst of which have the worst players being acquired. So where does Walker Kessler fit on this continuum of quality?
Ranked by 2yr RAPM from their point of trade: Giannis Antetokounmpo 2026 (7.3), Rudy Gobert 2022 (5.9), KD 2023 (5.7), Paul George 2019 (4.7), James Harden 2021 (4.3), Anthony Davis 2019 (3.4), Dejounte Murray 2021 (1.4), Desmond Bane (-0.2), Donovan Mitchell 2021 (-0.7)
Walker Kessler posted a 2yrRAPM of -0.6 in 2026 and the year prior(taking away his injured 2026) posted a worst in group -1.3.
That is awful compared to the field of similar asset acquisition costs and Walker Kessler also struggles with that which made the Lakers good last year (recall the oTOV value).
Walker has benefits: 1.7 2yr RAPM oREB value in 2026 (although 2025 was way down at 0.4) and he’s a 2+ dTS influence player(excellent rim protector).
But these benefits only exist at the cost of other components of the team.
He had a negative effect on virtually all of his teammates from 2023-2025 in TS%(measure of shooting efficiency), Rim frequency(opposing bigs can just sit at the rim), and teammate TO%(indicator that his lack of shooting likely hampers spacing and ergo their TO rates spike)
Contrary to popular belief, Luka cannot actually teach non-shooting rollers how to finish if they already don’t know how to and most of all he may not be able to suppress their roll man TOs that much.
He will be very helpful in replacing the lost offensive possessions from a Smart’s TO economy by grabbing misses off the rim and will replace the defensive impact of basically every departing Laker combined by being one of the league’s 5 best rim protectors.
High Offensive Rebounding x High 3PA lineups kill: LaMelo Moussa pairing was the best offensive duo in the NBA…
Walker provides this template by being an elite offensive rebounder.
= Points Points Points
However when combined with his 18th percentile scoring TO% and his very weak rollman finishing from his last healthy season worries abound. He’s an excellent rim protector but his dTOV(-1.4) and dREB(-0.5) imply that the rim protection is coming at the cost of better TO forcing and defensive rebounding.
Hard to exactly pin down his value as a player at this moment but he certainly sits among the Mikal Bridges to Dejounte segment of the quality continuum and seeing as how the Lakers have 0 tradeable first round picks for 7 years and the nearest to unlock is in the 2028 offseason, this team has gone all out on this.
The Lakers will be better than last year. And they will also be very very good perhaps even one of the five best teams in the NBA. But if they fall short, they will have little to no ammo to reload with. And if that’s the case then this trade has to make you the best team in the league to be worthwhile because it’s your last crack at the apple… and this probably doesn’t.