All-star caliber big man.
One can argue how accurate that is — Lopez has made one All-Star game in his 9 year career — but that was how Rob Pelinka described Brook Lopez when explaining some of the reasons the Lakers decided to part with D’Angelo Russell as a means to unload Timofey Mozgov’s bloated salary in order to acquire the Brooklyn big man.
It’s hard to know if the Lakers still would have done this trade if a player of Lopez’s quality wasn’t coming back in return (my guess: it would have), but the fact the Lakers are getting such a good player back is meaningful, even if it doesn’t fully erase the sting of losing a young player of Russell’s caliber.