The L.A. Lakers officially finished the season with the third-worst record in the league. That means that the Lakers enter the 2017 NBA draft lottery on May 16 with a 47 percent probability of winning a top-three pick. That means the Lakers had a 53 percent probability of losing their 2017 pick and a 2019 first-round pick entirely.
How the Lakers’ winning streak of doom actually saved their 2017 NBA Draft pick
L.A. ended the year scorching hot. That shouldn’t have been great news for their chances to keep their pick, but Lady Luck smiled on them.
Gary A. Vasquez-USA TODAY Sports
Luck smiled on their side and they earned the No. 2 pick. As it turned out, that late winning streak actually saved them. The Suns, who had the second-best odds to earn the No. 1 pick thanks to L.A. meaningless winning streak, actually ended up with the No. 4 pick. Had the Lakers stayed in that position, they would have lost their pick.
Perhaps this is karma.
How did this happen?
The Lakers owe a first-round pick to the Sixers (via the Suns) due to the Steve Nash trade in 2012. That pick remained protected in 2017. If it landed in the top three, as it ultimately did, the Lakers kept it. The protections disappear in 2018: now that L.A. will not convey its pick in 2017, Philadelphia will get the Lakers’ 2018 pick no matter where it lands.
The Lakers also owe a first-round pick to the Magic due to the Dwight Howard trade, also in 2012. That pick is legislated to be conveyed two years after the pick from the Nash trade goes out. However, a condition in that Howard trade holds that if the Nash pick (the one now owed to Philadelphia) wasn’t conveyed by 2017, the pick owed to the Magic instead becomes two second-round picks.
The winning streak of doom actually didn’t doom them
The Lakers won five straight late in their season. Before that streak, L.A. was 21-55 and a half-game “ahead” of the Suns for the second-worst record in the league. Had the Lakers just continued to be one game worse than Phoenix for the final half-dozen matches of the season, L.A. would have had a 56 percent chance of keeping their picks and a 44 percent chance of losing them.
Instead, the Lakers won five straight, including a farce of a game against the Spurs. The Suns, meanwhile, went 2-3. But in a twist, the Lakers moved up from the No. 3 slot in the lottery, while the Suns fell from the No. 2 slot.
The prescience of the protections
When the Lakers made the Nash and Howard trades in 2012, they had come off two disappointing second-round playoff exits following three straight trips to the NBA Finals (with two titles in there for good measure). Though Kobe Bryant was getting long in the tooth, it did not appear L.A. needed heavy protections on future picks it would send out, especially since the Lakers would be adding a Hall of Fame point guard in Nash and a fairly young All-NBA center in Howard.
But those pick protections became prescient as Nash’s career withered and Howard clashed with Kobe and left after one injury-dented season.
The lottery balls smiled on the Lakers in both 2015 and 2016 as protections kicked in to allow L.A. to keep their pick and selected D’Angelo Russell and Brandon Ingram. More was at stake in 2017 because of the quality at the top of the draft and the impacts to the pick owed to Orlando.
And then the lottery balls smiled on them again. Maybe the basketball gods chose to reward them actually playing to win at the end of the season.
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