As the Giannis Antetokounmpo trade sweepstakes heat up, the Los Angeles Lakers are considered a dark-horse destination for the Milwaukee Bucks superstar.
While the Lakers lack the trade assets possessed by some of Antetokounmpo’s top suitors, team insider Jovan Buha envisions a plausible, albeit unlikely, scenario in which they could leverage their cap space and market appeal to get a deal done without breaking up their Big 3 of Luka Dončić, LeBron James, and Austin Reaves.
Jovan Buha Breaks Down Lakers’ Roadmap to Landing Giannis Antetokounmpo
Fresh off a 53-win season and a decisive second-round playoff exit, the Lakers are looking to flesh out their roster, particularly their defense, to compete with the Western Conference’s premier teams like the Oklahoma City Thunder and San Antonio Spurs.
Acquiring Antetokounmpo, one of the league’s most dominant two-way forces, could give LA the frontcourt boost needed to put it over the top. While teams like the Miami Heat, Boston Celtics, and OKC are gaining steam as the two-time MVP’s most likely landing spots, Buha is holding out hope that he could end up with the Purple and Gold.
During a Monday appearance on “The Herd with Colin Cowherd,” Buha outlined everything that would need to happen for a blockbuster trade sending Antetokounmpo to the Lakers to come to fruition, beginning by highlighting LA’s favorable cap situation.
“There is a world, I don’t know if it’s this world, but there is a world in which they can figure it out,” Buha began. “Looking at my current cap projection for the Lakers, they’re gonna have about $49.2 million in cap space. Giannis is making $58.5 million in cap space. So, the Lakers would have to clear nearly $10 million to add Giannis into it, and you could do that one of two ways.
“You could do a trade dump before the deal … you could do something like Deandre Ayton and Dalton Knecht, or you could do Jarred Vanderbilt, and you could find a way to dump some combination of those contracts, clear the space, and then acquire Giannis, or you could do a three-team trade … where they go somewhere else, and you have to help facilitate that with draft compensation.”
However, Buha noted that a deal centered around draft picks and salary relief would likely only materialize if Antetokounmpo demands a trade to LA or if rival teams are reluctant to part with significant assets for the increasingly injury-prone 31-year-old.
“I think there’s two scenarios where this heads from a slim, slim, slim probability to an actual possibility here,” Buha continued. “It would have to either be Giannis forces his way to LA to some degree, with either specifically saying, ‘I wanna go be a Laker, I wanna be in LA.’ … The other scenario would be the market for Giannis is cool, the offers are underwhelming. … So, there is a pathway for this to work.”
“There is a pathway – however narrow, however unlikely – for the Lakers to land Giannis, keep Austin, and keep LeBron and have a new Big Four.”@jasonrmcintyre and @jovanbuha discuss the potential of the Lakers landing Giannis this offseason pic.twitter.com/CYLI9TH5yJ
— Herd w/Colin Cowherd (@TheHerd) May 25, 2026
The insider added that if Milwaukee ultimately has the option to acquire a young star such as Evan Mobley or Alperen Şengün in return for Antetokounmpo, the Lakers would surely be outbid, leaving them at the mercy of the unpredictable trade market.
