Los Angeles Lakers: Upon reflection, the Lakers have drafted great

2015 NBA Draft:

If we are being honest, the only draft that you could really circle and say that the Lakers could have really made a better selection was the 2015 NBA Draft. The team selected point guard D’Angelo Russell with the second-overall pick, and we’ll get to his fate later when Kristaps Porzingis went with the fourth overall pick.

At the time though the jury was still out on Porzingis and when he was selected by the New York Knicks it was recognized that it was a very real possibility that he would end up being a flop.

He obviously wasn’t and he has since been deemed a unicorn, one of the brightest young players in the game that could make out an exceptional career.

The case against Porzingis, and the case for Russell, is his injury. Porzingis tore his ACL in February of 2018 and has not played since and it is unclear if he will be the same player when he does return.

Russell blossomed into an all-star this season with the Brooklyn Nets and is now in the same class as Porzingis. It was not a bad pick whatsoever.

The only problem is that the Lakers traded Russell to get rid of Timofey Mozgov‘s contract. The big mistake there was not the trade but was the contract that the teams signed Mozgov to, and at the time it did not look like Russell was going to make those leaps.

Who knows if he would have in LA. Maybe he needed the move to Brooklyn to mature, or maybe it was just a factor of growing up. Either way, there are no glaring “aw, we could have had him!” selections in the 2015 NBA Draft.