The Los Angeles Lakers will be sweating out Tuesday night as they await the fate of their 2016 first round pick. The team’s pick is top three protected, meaning if two teams leapfrog them in the lottery, they would lose the pick. With the Lakers finishing the season with the second worst record in the league, they have about a 55% chance of keeping their pick.
LAL could still drop to the third overall pick and keep it. But if that is the scenario, it seems that they may not want to use it to draft another young prospect. According to ESPN’s Chad Ford, the Lakers will seriously consider trading the pick should they fall to third overall:
Multiple sources said at the combine this week that they expect the pick to be in play if it’s No. 3 — with the Lakers looking for a young veteran in return.
This is certainly not surprising. This draft class has two discernible stars and not much else after that. With Los Angeles already having a nice core of young, talented players, it makes sense that the team would look to add more established players in lieu of projects at the third spot.
That said, the Lakers will find it difficult to find a good suitor for the pick. For one, every other team also knows that the third overall pick does not hold much value in this draft. Reports have already suggested that the purple and gold will try to swing for the fences with Paul George but the third overall pick is not the centerpiece for that kind of trade. Should the Lakers be looking to add a “young veteran” as Ford reports, they would likely need to add another one of their young players to the mix, and that would simply not be smart.
This Lakers team is not ready to win yet and unless they have tremendous success in free agency, it would not make sense to break up a talented core that could seemingly be in Los Angeles for a long time to aim for mediocrity. Instead, they should be focused on building from within and making safe decisions in trades and free agency to take the next step.
Shopping the pick makes sense and the Lakers should always be open to trade discussions considering the success that they have had with them in the past. But it should not be a planned process that the team has decided upon before seeing the returns they can get.
For now, all eyes will be on the lottery to see whether the Lakers keep their pick at all.
