As it currently stands, the Los Angeles Lakers’ center room features Walker Kessler, Kevon Looney and Sandro Mamukelashvili. Kessler, of course, is a locked-in starter while Looney and Mamukelashvili will split time as the reserves depending on matchups and game flow, given Mamukelashvili is a small-ball 5 and Looney is the traditional option.
But according to Jake Fischer, it doesn’t sound like the Lakers are content to enter the season with just those three as their big man rotation. Fischer reports
they’ve been linked to a bouncy Eastern Conference center in an aim to also trim down the roster.
“The Lakers, meanwhile, have been engaged in trade talks to try to get their roster down from 16 to 15 standard contracts and perhaps even acquire some additional frontcourt help in the process,” Fischer wrote.
“League sources say that the Lakers and Bucks have held exploratory trade discussions on a framework that would ship former first-round selection Dalton Knecht to Milwaukee (along with second-round draft capital) in exchange for big man Jericho Sims,” Fischer continued. “Yet it must be said that I’ve also heard some pessimism from sources briefed on those talks that such a trade will actually go through.”
Now entering year six, Sims has spent time with both the New York Knicks and Milwaukee Bucks but hardly entrenched himself as a rotation player at either spot. He did, however, appear in a career-high 67 games last season en route to a career-high 1,318 minutes. He’s a sprightly, athletic, undersized center whose offensive arsenal is very limited beyond dunks and plagued by turnovers (career 24.1% turnover rate).
It should not be undersold how dominant of a dunker he is, though. According to Basketball Reference, nearly 60% of all his made field goals (59.5%) have been dunks; he’s totaled 250 of them across five seasons, averaging just under one per game and one every 15.6 minutes.
Furthermore, 82.1% of his career shots have come between 0-3 feet and he’s converted 80.3% of them. Alongside Luka Dončić and Austin Reaves, his above-the-rim play-finishing could have value in a small role, and he’s a pretty lively mover whose defensive imprint is often undone by poor positioning and underwhelming size at 6 feet 10 inches.
Acquiring Sims wouldn’t likely be much of a needle-mover for Los Angeles. But it would diversify the center room a bit, bring in an efficient play-finisher who helps generate a good deal of offensive rebounds and offer Sims the most favorable offensive environment of his career. That could help on the margins.
You can follow Jackson on Twitter at @jackfrank_jjf.
