So far this season, the Lakers are arguably one of the most volatile teams in the league. This is especially Russell Westbrook, due to his inefficient play on the court and too many outrageous mistakes, Lakers head coach Frank Vogel has chosen to refrigerate Westbrook's tactical arrangements at key moments in the past few games, which has also caused heated discussion from the outside world.
You know, Westbrook is still one of the Lakers' big three players, and he is also a player with an annual salary of more than $40 million, so refrigerating players of this level is certainly not an easy thing for Vogel to do. And the relationship between Vogel and Westbrook reportedly appears to have become more strained.
In an interview, when Wei Shao asked whether Vogel had communicated with him about when to go to the field, Wei Shao said that he did not:
The lack of communication between the manager and the team's core stars before was certainly not a good thing, especially with the player's overall performance struggling.
On the other hand, according to the US media Bill Oram, the current Lakers "no longer believe that they can rely on the current lineup to play a high level of play":
Because of this, the Lakers definitely need to make a move before the trade deadline, but what the Lakers really need is to put Wei Shao on the shelf and change back to the players who can make the team have better lineup depth, and at present, the Lakers may have a lot of difficulty to promote the transaction involving Wei Shao.
According to ESPN, the Lakers are still reluctant to even sacrifice their 2027 first-round picks in a potential deal involving Westbrook:
"Sources told ESPN reporter Brian Windhorst that so far, the Lakers are still reluctant to include the 2027 first-round pick in any potential deal involving Westbrook."
It is worth mentioning that the Lakers are indeed willing to send tarlon Horton Tucker and Kendrick Nunn two players, but there does not seem to be a team that has shown particular interest in these two players and Westbrook. So the current situation of Wei Shao is that he cannot get the trust of the head coach, and the team does not even have the confidence to win in the case of his continued stay, and the management will not be willing to send Wei Shao away at the expense of future assets.