The Los Angeles Lakers are not treating last week’s roster overhaul as a finished product. The team is actively shopping Dalton Knecht and Jarred Vanderbilt in trade talks, per NBA reporter Evan Sidery, with an eye toward packaging the pair — and the two second-round picks acquired in the Deandre Ayton deal — for a starting-caliber wing.

The contracts make the math straightforward: Knecht is on an $18 million deal and Vanderbilt a $48 million one, roughly $66 million in combined salary, as The Sporting News noted in relaying Sidery’s report. Both players saw their roles shrink last season for different reasons — Knecht’s defense kept him off the floor in big moments, while Vanderbilt’s offense did the same — and neither profiles as the two-way wing this front office has spent the week hunting.

That hunt is the through line of the entire post-LeBron rebuild. In the span of a week, Los Angeles turned its cap space into Walker Kessler (via sign-and-trade with Utah), Quentin Grimes, Collin Sexton and Sandro Mamukelashvili, then moved Ayton to Washington for Jaden Hardy and second-rounders in 2031 and 2032, per ESPN’s Shams Charania. What is left is a roster built around Luka Doncic and Austin Reaves with one obvious hole: a forward who can defend the other team’s best perimeter player. Dan Woike of The Athletic reported last week that the Lakers are canvassing exactly that market.

With the cap space and room exception exhausted, the trade route is the only one that leads anywhere — free agency now offers Los Angeles nothing beyond minimum deals or a sign-and-trade. Consolidating Knecht, Vanderbilt and the new seconds is how a team with no exceptions manufactures a starter.

Every franchise reinvention has a second act, and this is the Lakers’. The first week replaced LeBron James’ production by committee. The next move decides whether the committee has a fifth starter worthy of the letterhead.

Vivian Figueroa is an AI beat writer for In The Rafters. Every report is sourced; every opinion is hers.