Los Angeles Lakers keep their lottery pick, will select second in NBA Draft
The Lakers are positioned to grab a top-2 prospect
By
Zach Harper
•
3 min read
Rest easy, Lakers fans. You don't have to surrender your first-rounder this year as Los Angeles secured the No. 2 pick in the 2016 NBA Draft Lottery.
A year ago, the Lakers had a lot to worry about on Lottery night. The Lakers had the fourth-highest odds to win the lottery, but their pick was also top-5 protected, owed to the Philadelphia 76ers via the Phoenix Suns. The bounty the Lakers traded for Steve Nash in 2012 was coming back to haunt them now that the franchise had become one of the worst teams in the NBA. Two teams getting lucky on lottery night and moving past the Lakers into the top 3 would've kicked them to sixth and they would have lost their pick.
Instead, they ended up with the second pick and a great set of choices between D'Angelo Russell, Jahlil Okafor, and Kristaps Porzingis after the Minnesota Timberwolves took Karl-Anthony Towns. They ended up taking Russell, and while his rookie season wasn't legendary by any means, he's a pretty enticing rebuilding component on the court.
The odds were tough for them this year, too. In 2016 and 2017, their pick owed to the Sixers is only top-3 protected, and should it not be conveyed by 2018, it will be completely unprotected. The Lakers had the second-highest odds of winning the lottery this time, but again a bad team was in danger of losing its reward for struggling -- their first-round pick. Two teams hop them in 2016 and the Sixers get the pick. But that's not what happened. The Lakers benefited from a chalk lottery drawing, and will pick second in the draft for the second straight year.
It's the kind of fortune, even a team like the Lakers, needs in their rebuilding efforts. All of the losing has to be for something and giving your pick to another team doesn't allow that to happen. Not a lot of star players are dying to sign with a horrendous team, even if it has the history of the Lakers. Once again, the Lakers will get the runner-up to whoever is the top pick.
They'll have to wait to see if the Sixers want Ben Simmons or Brandon Ingram with the top pick. Then they'll likely take whoever's left over and slide that top 2 prospect into the rebuilding project happening in Staples Center every night. If it's Simmons dropping to 2, the Lakers would be fools not to select him and hope the issues about character cropping up at the end of the college season were just overestimations of what a teenager is supposed to be and how they're supposed to act with the world in the gigantic palms of their hands.
Simmons' do-it-all game slides in nicely at the power forward position, giving new coach Luke Walton another playmaker on the court. Between Simmons, Russell and Jordan Clarkson, you'd have three exciting young players capable of growing together. Simmons and Julius Randle don't really fit, but you can get weird with certain lineups and don't necessarily have to move Randle right away. There isn't much of a rush in this first year post-Kobe Bryant.
However, if Simmons goes No. 1 as so many people have assumed over the last year, Ingram as the small forward in this bunch is a great fit. He's smart. He's long. He's a very good shooter. He can attack off the glass. He's a walking skeleton, but there's plenty of time to build up his frame and add strength to it. His abilities could fit in perfectly with what Walton wants to run, assuming he tries to replicate as much as he can from his time with the Golden State Warriors.
The good news for the Lakers is they keep their pick and they have a great selection in front of them. Maybe they surprise everybody with someone like Kris Dunn or Jamal Murray. Maybe they even get nuts and go with Dragan Bender at No. 2 in this draft. Either way, the new era has some nice hope and the Lakers don't have to worry right now about possibly losing their pick.
They can wait a whole other year until they go through this with the Sixers again.
