The days leading up to the NBA Draft Lottery can be an extremely stressful time for many NBA teams and executives, and this season, Los Angeles Lakers GM Mitch Kupchak found out just how stressful it can be. Due to a trade, the Philadelphia 76ers owned the Lakers first round pick for this years draft unless it was a top 3 pick. The Lakers, after losing Kobe Bryant to retirement and one of the worst seasons in franchise history, desperately needed their draft pick in this years draft. Because of this, Kupchak was stressed out that their pick would fall outside of the top 3 and end up 4th or lower. Luckily it did not. They got the 2nd pick, but that doesn’t mean that he wants to be placed in a situation like this next season.
Mitch Kupchak: “I don’t want to be here next year.”
— Mark Medina (@MarkG_Medina) May 18, 2016
Teams that are in the draft lottery are often the worst teams in the NBA, and obviously other than stress, this is another obvious reason that Kupchak wouldn’t want to be in the lottery next year. The Lakers are rebuilding, but maybe with a new addition of a very young, very talented player, and some major free agency acquisitions, they could be able to turn from pretenders into contenders.
Just in case you were wondering who the Lakers are going to be looking at, it seems that Kupchak wants to also build the teams frontcourt:
Mitch said the team’s biggest need this offseason will entail upgrading the frontcourt
— Mark Medina (@MarkG_Medina) May 18, 2016
The only real question of who they pick depends on whether or not the 76ers select Ben Simmons or Brandon Ingram with the 1st overall pick.
