With his future with the Lakers determined, teams across the league have reportedly expressed interest in Jalen Hood-Schifino, including the Atlanta Hawks, Utah Jazz and Brooklyn Nets.
The Jalen Hood-Schifino Era in Los Angeles was a short and confusing one. With barely more than 100 minutes in the NBA, the purple and gold decided to cut bait on him after two injury-riddled seasons by declining his third-year player option.
With so much still unknown about him, there is plenty of intrigue about what his future holds, and that includes from other teams around the league.
On Friday, Jake Fischer of Bleacher Report hosted a stream on the BR App and talked about Hood-Schifino’s future, including listing a number of teams who may be interested in trading for him.
“He will be playing in the G League this year and he’ll have plenty of opportunity to showcase himself both in the G Leauge in general and at the G League Showcase when the entire league descends upon Orlando in December. Atlanta had interest in him in that talk with Dejounte [Murray] last year. Utah, I believe, has shown interest in him, to my knowledge, in those talks about Walker Kessler. Brooklyn, I’ve been told, is a team that has interest in him. So, just keep an eye on Jalen Hood-Schifino as a potential outgoing salary expiring deal.”
As our own Bryan Toporek recently wrote, there are financial benefits in the short and long term of the Lakers declining JHS’s contract.
In the short term, it makes him an expiring contract in upcoming trade talks. And it’s also interesting to see the teams linked to JHS here. It’s probably not a coincidence that all these teams are ones the Lakers have reportedly been interested in players from in recent years.
JHS wasn’t going to be much more than a filler piece in a trade even before the Lakers declined his option and that certainly won’t change now. But just because his future in Los Angeles has a definitive end point now doesn’t mean he lost all intrigue across the league.
You can follow Jacob on Twitter at @JacobRude.