How Have the Lakers Done With Mid to Late 1st Round Picks?
With the NBA draft rapidly approaching, rumors and speculation are running rampant. There has been endless talk about who the Lakers will take with the no. 2 overall pick, as well as talk about whether that pick will be used to obtain an all star caliber player like say, for example, DeMarcus Cousins.
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But what about the Lakers 27th overall pick? For every mock draft you look at, you will likely see a different player that the Lakers are predicted to take with that pick. This is because of the impossibility of predicting what occurs with the 26 picks preceding it. Put differently, it is extremely difficult to have any sense of who will actually be available when the Lakers are on the clock with their late first round pick.
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So instead of engaging in guesswork, let’s look at how the the Lakers have done with mid to late first round picks in the past. This will give some insight on whether the Lakers have done well at finding players that other teams missed the boat on. For the sake of keeping this article reasonable in length, let’s start with the 2002 NBA draft.
2002 – Kareem Rush – No. 20
Well this is certainly a blast from the past. Rush was a smooth shooting lefty out of Missouri who certainly looked the part of a NBA caliber shooting guard. Alas, looks can be deceiving, as he never really established himself as anything more than a 3 point shooter off the bench. He was out of the league after the 2009-2010 season.
2003 – Brian Cook – No. 24
Good ol’ “Cookie” was a sweet shooting power forward out of Illinois who was drafted because of his fit in the triangle offense as a 3 point shooting big man who could help space the floor for Shaquille O’Neal. On the positive side, Cook lived up to that billing, shooting 40% or better from 3 pt range in 2 out of his first 4 seasons with the Lakers. Unfortunately, that is literally all Cook seemed capable of doing, as he was clearly a minus defender, rebounder, etc. His last stint in the NBA was the 2011-2012 season.
2004 – Sasha Vujacic – No. 27
The Machine! Vujacic was drafted as a 3 point shooting specialist out of Slovenia. He was projected to play point guard coming out of Europe which, to Lakers fans now, should seem pretty hilarious. Vujacic was famously known as a practice shooter in that he could hit tons of shots in practice just not in games. He was also sometimes referred to as a “pesky defender,” but what that actually meant was he would full court press players he had no business full court pressing, usually leading to a stupid foul 50 feet from the basket or him getting blown by (see Allen, Ray, during the 2008 NBA Finals). His only real claim to fame for the Lakers was hitting two free throws at the end of game 7, sealing their 2010 NBA Championship. His last real NBA run was the 2010-2011 season (No, I don’t count his two games with the Clippers during the 2013-2014 season).
Random side story about Vujacic: My younger brother and his friends ran into him in Cancun a few years ago. My brother, a die hard Lakers fan, excitedly approached Vujacic and tried to chat him up about NBA stuff. His only substantive response was “where the girls at?” Long live The Machine.
2006 – Jordan Farmar – No. 26
Farmar was a local high school and college product, playing ball at UCLA under Ben Howland on teams that went deep into the NCAA tournament. He was likely drafted as the Lakers point guard of the future, which wasn’t saying much since their starter at the time was Smush Parker (I still have PTSD from his Lakers’ tenure). But with Phil Jackson as the head coach and with the return of Derek Fisher during the 2007-2008 season, it seemed like maybe the stars weren’t aligned for Farmar with the Lakers. Indeed, he seemed better suited playing in an uptempo offense and so, for most of his time with the Lakers, he was relegated as an energy guy off the bench. But the truth, really, was that Farmar just wasn’t as good as he thought he was.
When it was all said and done, Farmar was a decent 3 pt shooter, average finisher, average play maker and below average defender for the Lakers. Because of his failure to improve in most of these areas, he ended up playing overseas after the 2011-2012 season. The Lakers gave him another chance during the 2013-2014 season, but he was perpetually injured and not resigned. That offeason, coach/GM/dictator Doc Rivers gave Farmar a two year deal deal, only to cut him halfway through his first season despite his salary being guaranteed for the next season. Whether Farmar gets another chance with an NBA team next season remains to be seen.
2007 – Javaris Crittenton – No. 19
Crittenton was actually a pretty well regarded pick by the Lakers, as he was a big point guard coming out of Georgia Tech who seemed full of untapped potential. But his stint with the Lakers was extremely short lived, as he was part of the famous trade that brought Pau Gasol to the Lakers during the 2007-2008 season. At the time, he was considered the best asset in the trade acquired by the Grizzlies (If you say Marc Gasol, you’re lying to yourself), so the Lakers get some credit for drafting a young player whose perceived “potential” helped them acquire Gasol.
Of course, Crittenton’s NBA career was never fully realized due to the fact that he threatened to shoot Gilbert Arenas in the knee over a debt from a card game in January of 2010, and then was accused of murdering a 22-year-old mother of four in August of 2011. He plead guilty to those charges and is currently serving a 23 year prison sentence. Absolutely tragic, stranger than fiction kinda stuff right there.
Oddly enough, Crittenton was the last Lakers draft pick taken in the mid to late first round. This is because, subsequently, the Lakers either traded away their 1st round pick or ended up picking in the lottery after the 2007 draft.
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So how have the Lakers fared with these mid to late first round picks in the past? Put simply, not well. All of the above players are no longer in the league and, other than maybe Farmar, likely have no chance catching on with a team next season.
But hopefully, given that the guys mentioned above were picked a long time, the Lakers front office has become better equipped at evaluating players that will be available late in the first round and will put that knowledge to full use in making their selection with the 27th overall pick in this year’s NBA draft. Indeed, this is supported by the fact that the Lakers have made some solid selections with some of their second round picks over the last couple of years.