Every team participating in Tuesday night's 2015-16 NBA draft lottery is moored by random luck and a helpless combination of hope and dread.
But by a particularly wide margin, no team has more to lose than the Los Angeles Lakers.
Coming off their most pitiful season in franchise history—in which they finished with the league's most anemic defense, per NBA.com, and the second-worst record at 17-65—there's a 55.8 percent chance the Lakers land a top-three pick. That's meaningful, because thanks to the Steve Nash trade all the way back in 2012, if the pick falls any lower than that, they have to send it to the Philadelphia 76ers.
The bad consequences don't end there. If the Lakers send their first-round pick to the Sixers this year, then they also have to fork over their 2018 first-round pick (top-five protected) to the Orlando Magic. If L.A. is still really bad and keeps its 2018 pick, it becomes unprotected in 2019. But if the Lakers keep their first-rounder this year and in 2017 (also top-three protected), they only have to give the Magic their 2017 and 2018 second-round picks.
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Read Full Article at Bleacher Report - NBA
Article written by Michael Pina
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