"Listen now, LeBron James and Lonzo Ball made Zubac better," Johnson argued. "Why? Pick-and-roll, rolling for the dunks. Boom! He was going to be a restricted free agent. We knew we was going to use that cap space for a superstar. Now, I had to try and space the floor, so the trade I made, I wanted to make sure I could see if we could space the floor, and it didn’t work out. Now, Zubac has a long way to go to be special, but we had to try things. So that wasn’t a trade like we traded a guy to win a championship to the Clippers." Lame answer. Zubac was super young and put up some decent numbers his final year with the Lakers. He was only going to get better. He signed with the Clippers for 7 milltion per year.
Even many of us “dumb fans” knew that Big Zu had the potential to turn into a very good starting caliber C and have a long career. There’s zero excuse for trading him for a one trick pony player who wasn’t even good at said trick. When the members of the other side of the trade were literally laughing at you, you know that the trade tipped drastically in their favor.
