The Los Angeles Lakers haven’t had much of a summer to write home about so far. The team has signed largely-unproven, restricted free agent shooting guard Max Christie to a four-year, $32 million new deal and re-signed incumbent All-NBA combo forward LeBron James to a two-year, $101.4 million deal. And that’s it, that’s the entire extent of their signings to date.

L.A.’s decision to ink the 6-foot-6 former MSU standout to his new contract is befuddling on its surface, but apparently it’s merely one step in the team’s transactional plan.

ESPN’s Brian Windhorst and Tim Bontemps recently unpacked L.A.’s on-the-surface strange investment into Christie on a recent installment of Windhorst’s “The Hoop Collective Podcast” show.

“This only ever really made [financial] sense if you trade [starting point guard] D’Angelo Russell,” Bontemps said.

“They need to trade Russell, they haven’t traded Russell yet,” Windhorst agreed.

Russell recently picked up his $18.7 million player option for the 2024-25 season. The 6-foot-3 OSU product enjoyed a surprisingly solid run in 2023-24, averaging 18.0 points on .456/.415/.828 shooting splits, 6.3 assists, 3.1 rebounds, 0.9 steals and 0.5 blocks a night across 76 contests (69 starts).

For the second straight postseason with the Lakers (and third straight overall, if you count his lackluster run with the Minnesota Timberwolves in 2021-22), Russell’s production took a massive dive in the playoffs. He averaged just 14.2 points while slashing .384/.318/.500, 4.2 assists (against 1.8 turnovers), 2.8 rebounds and 0.8 steals a night.

Understandably, Los Angeles is hoping to upgrade the playmaker position, though the team doesn’t have a ton of resources at its disposal to do so. Russell may at this point in the summer be a negative trade asset, which could explain why chatter of his being traded has died down significantly of late.