If the Los Angeles Lakers do trade for Kawhi Leonard, it is now very unlikely Moe Wagner will be in the deal after the team announced they had officially signed him on Sunday.
By officially signing Wagner, the Lakers now cannot trade him for 30 days, per the NBA’s Collective Bargaining Agreement, meaning if the team was to do a deal for Leonard soon Wagner wouldn’t be included.
So why would the front office do this now? Well, there are a few reasons this makes sense for the Lakers.
For one, as a late-first round pick, Wagner was unlikely to be so valued by the San Antonio Spurs that his removal from the Lakers’ pool of assets would be a dealbreaker in a transaction for a player as valuable as Leonard.