Rumors are swirling that the Lakers have offered up Lonzo Ball, among others, to the Wizards for John Wall.  It started with a random tweet that said that Los Angeles had offered Ball, Brandon Ingram and Kentavious Caldwell-Pope to Washington for Wall.

As it turns out the rumor might actually be true and LeBron’s agent, who is also Wall’s agent, is heavily involved in getting the deal setup. 

Via Bullets Forever:

Source No. 1, a current NBA agent, surprised me by saying the story was true. The source said it’s something Rich Paul — agent to LeBron James and, as of January 2016, John Wall — was orchestrating. But, according to this source, the Wizards were saying no.

I was still dubious, so I checked with Source No. 2, another current NBA agent who’s at least as dialed in as Source No. 1. Source No. 2 said the rumor is true. This source said Ball and Caldwell-Pope were definitely in the deal, but that there was still discussion whether the third player would be Ingram, Josh Hart, or Kyle Kuzma. While the boundaries of the deal were defined, details still had to be finalized, and the whole thing could still fall apart.

This could have all been agent chatter, though. Agents are people (no really, it’s true), and people gossip. That two people have heard the same story doesn’t necessarily mean the story is true. It just means they both heard it.

So, I went outside the agent network, and asked Source No. 3: someone who works in an unrelated industry but has long-standing connections to Rich Paul and LeBron James. Source No. 3 said Paul was trying to get Wall traded to the Lakers and that the Wizards would do it if Paul could get Magic Johnson and Rob Pelinka on board. But, Source No. 3 warned, it wouldn’t be easy, because the Lakers like their youngsters. Source No. 3 added the nugget that Paul was working on trades to put talent around James because of fears that younger free agents “don’t want to play with LeBron anymore.”

It didn’t take long for LeBron to start pulling his strings and putting deals together.  

Things are different in Los Angeles they said, LeBron won’t have any control over personnel decisions they said.

Here we are, LeBron is still running things, just in a better looking jersey.