Spurs could act as third team to absorb Russell Westbrook in Kyrie Irving trade, per report

The Los Angeles Lakers and Brooklyn Nets need each other. The Nets don’t want to retain Kyrie Irving, and the Lakers are the only team interested in adding him via a trade. As badly as the Lakers want Irving, they likely want to move off of Russell Westbrook‘s contract just as much. The problem lies in Brooklyn’s similar disinterest in employing Westbrook at a $47 million salary. No team in the NBA wants to pay Westbrook that much. If the Nets won’t, the Lakers need to find someone else capable of doing so. There are very few teams capable of absorbing such a contract.

But one possibility making the rounds? The San Antonio Spurs, who were first floated as a Westbrook destination by ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski. Bleacher Report’s Eric Pincus dove deep into the mechanics of a possible three-team deal from there, and in essence, the ice relies on the roughly $37 million worth of cap space the Spurs are capable of creating. That isn’t quite enough to absorb Westbrook outright, but if the Lakers were willing to take back a role player like Josh Richardson or Doug McDermott, that could cover the difference. The Spurs would presumably be compensated for their troubles with a first-round pick. The Lakers have two tradable first-rounders in 2027 and 2029. The Nets would create a $37 million trade exception by dealing for Irving without taking money back.

There are a couple of major obstacles the teams involved would need to clear before making such a deal, though. The first is Gregg Popovich’s longstanding reluctance to deal with the Lakers. The Lakers and Spurs last made a trade in 1990, when Popovich was just an assistant under Larry Brown in San Antonio. In 2018, when the Lakers were attempting to land Kawhi Leonard, Mark Heisler of The Orange County Register reported that “it’s one of Popovich’s cardinal rules not to help Western Conference rivals, much less one with the tradition and resources of the Lakers.” Popovich publicly complained about the Lakers acquiring Pau Gasol in 2008, saying “what they did in Memphis is beyond comprehension.” The two sides here are not especially friendly.