Los Angeles Lakers need to be careful with their new first round pick

How the Los Angeles Lakers use the first round pick from the Cavs matters more than you might think.

Alright, so as a result of the trade that sent Isaiah Thomas from Cleveland to the Los Angeles Lakers, the Cavs were nice enough to include a first round draft pick. This means that on top of all of the summer fun that free agency should be in correlation with what the LA front office wants or thinks they’re going to get, we’re going to get to see what they can do with another late first round pick.

The team was lucky enough to strike gold in finding Kyle Kuzma at 27th overall, but if they’re not able to get a quality player at a similar point in the draft next summer, it’ll only hamper any hopes of a successful 2019 free agency campaign.

Going after LeBron James and Paul George more immediately is one thing, but there are also plenty of play-makers and game changers that will be on the market in the summer of 2019 like Klay Thompson and Jimmy Butler, among others.

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For me, this is going to be the true telling point of whether or not the Lakers fan base should fully put their trust in Magic Johnson in order to get the franchise back to the top of the basketball world. His emphasis on Lonzo Ball being one of the next great point guards to wear purple and gold is being hindered plenty by all of the off the court drama — but it still may prevail to be true.

Should that be the case, you would think Johnson’s confidence in who he has now that Jordan Clarkson and Larry Nance Jr. are in Cleveland will be reflected in who he picks in the draft. Over the summer, one of their biggest questions moving forward will remain at shooting guard.

Josh Hart has plenty of promise, but there is room to believe that LA won’t start him. Instead, they’ll hope that it can be a spot filled by Paul George or perhaps Brandon Ingram depending on the specifics of the summer.

In any case, Johnson must be certain he addresses that specific concern over the summer in order to continue being headed in the right direction.

He’ll also have to make a stance on the crossroad he’s been on since draft night in deciding if the Lakers really are going to go all in moving forward with Lonzo Ball despite his way-too-cool demeanor and his louder than necessary father.

Johnson isn’t the kind of person that you would think would put up with disrespect for too long. After all, the power is in his hands to do something — and quickly, at that — if the Ball family continues to be too much to bear.

Making their first round pick that they now have count would mean the world to Los Angeles, even amid the chaos. Perhaps they’ll find another diamond in the rough or be able to use that as leverage in a sign and trade for a star, if that ends up being what’s necessary.

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Johnson is hell-bent on getting a superstar name to the Lakers via free agency, and it’s absolutely safe to say that giving up a first round pick plus another part of the young core wouldn’t be out of the question.