Lakers Ready To Hit Panic Button

After being exposed in their 109-96 loss to the Celtics on Sunday, there have been grumblings coming out of Los Angeles that the Lakers are ready to hit the panic button and make a trade to bolster their chances of winning a third consecutive NBA championship. With the luxury of another snow day for TheBostonInsider, I decided to be of help to GM Mitch Kupchak and devise a three-team trade to shake it up for the Lakers that involves the Nuggets and Knicks. That's right, this trade will help the Lakers as well as facilitate Carmelo Anthony's long awaited departure from Denver for his preferred destination of New York. Go ahead, check it out, the trade works for all three teams. The Lakers add Chauncey Billups and Nene from Denver and Wilson Chandler and Ronny Turiaf from the Knicks. The Knicks get Carmelo as well as Ron Artest, Steve Blake, and Theo Ratliff from L.A. The Nuggets pick up Andrew Bynum from the Lakers and Danilo Gallinari, Anthony Randolph, and Eddy Curry's expiring contract from New York. The Nuggets would also receive a first round pick and $3-million in cash from the Lakers and Knicks as they start their post-Carmelo rebuilding process. For the Lakers, they would have a rotation of Kobe Bryant, Pau Gasol, Lamar Odom, Billups, Nene, Wilson Chandler, Shannon Brown, Matt Barnes (when he returns from knee surgery), Luke Walton, and Turiaf. They would get a point guard with championship experience in Billups, Nene and Turiaf would give them a physical presence inside, and Chandler is a better player at this stage of his career than the mercurial Artest. The Knicks would be able to go with a team of Anthony, Amar'e Stoudemire, Ray Felton, Artest, Landry Fields, Blake, Ratliff, Kelenna Azubuike, and Toney Douglas. The Knicks would lack size but it would lay the foundation for a team that could compete in the East for the rest of the decade. The Nuggets would receive three building blocks for the future in Gallinari, Bynum, and Randolph, salary cap relief from Curry's expiring deal, and the cash and draft picks from the Lakers. Rarely does such a mega-trade take place in the NBA but this is truly a win-win-win for all three teams.