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NBA Draft 2016: Simulating Lakers’ Lottery Chances in Mid-January

By Cody Williams

Jun 29, 2015; Los Angeles, CA, USA; Los Angeles Lakers guard D'Angelo Russell (1), guard Anthony Brown (3) , forward Lanny Nance (7) and are introduced to the media during a press conference at the Toyota Sports Center. Mandatory Credit: Jayne Kamin-Oncea-USA TODAY Sports
Jun 29, 2015; Los Angeles, CA, USA; Los Angeles Lakers guard D'Angelo Russell (1), guard Anthony Brown (3) , forward Lanny Nance (7) and are introduced to the media during a press conference at the Toyota Sports Center. Mandatory Credit: Jayne Kamin-Oncea-USA TODAY Sports /
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Simulating and dissecting the 2016 Draft Lottery to see where they Lakers land and if they’ll keep their pick

This is your monthly reminder that the Los Angeles Lakers are not a good basketball team in the 2015-16 season. The front office and the coaching staff may try to skate around this fact more often than not, but the fact remains that the Lakers are rebuilding. As such, the 2016 NBA Draft is of particular interest to the Lakers.

Not only are the Lakers hoping to add another favorable NBA prospect in the same light as D’Angelo Russell, Julius Randle, Jordan Clarkson, and even Larry Nance Jr., but the Lakers are also just saying their prayers that the NBA Draft Lottery gods show favor on the organization by slotting them in the top-three so that Los Angeles’ first-round pick doesn’t transfer to the Philadelphia 76ers.

To check in and see if the 2016 NBA Draft is going to be all smiles or all sadness, we took a look at the draft lottery a little more than a month ago by simulating the lottery to see where the Lakers pick fell. At that time, the Lakers sat in a similar position as they do now with the second-worst record in the league.

Just for relevancy’s sake and because the lottery is notoriously unpredictable, we decided to run the 100 simulations of the 2016 NBA Draft Lottery again (with the standings as they are on Jan. 11) on NBA Tankathon and, well, things didn’t come out quite as favorable as the first time for the Lakers:

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Before diving into everything, it’s worth noting that the Lakers as they currently sit in the standings have a 55.8 percent chance of staying in the top-three and 19.9 percent chance of getting the No. 1-overall pick in the 2016 NBA Draft. If only these latest simulations would’ve played out that way.

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Whereas the first round of simulations saw the Lakers keep their first-round pick 64 percent of the time, this latest round has them only keeping 44 percent of the time. That makes some sense considering the mean between the two would be close to the 55.8 percent probability of staying in the top-three and keeping the pick, but seeing 44 percent is still less than settling for Lakers fans who dream about Ben Simmons and Brandon Ingram on a nightly basis.

If the Lakers were to miss out on a top-three pick, they have ample cap-room to still make something happen going into next season around the core of young players already in place. However, the contrast in the two simulations of the lottery only further confirm that relying on the lottery in the Lakers’ situation with their first-round pick is relatively horrifying. Things could play out what seems like one out of a billion ways for the Lakers in the 2016 NBA Draft.

Next: Lakers' 3 Biggest Areas of Need Before Trade Deadline

Let’s just hope it winds up being one of the ways that leads the franchise back to relevance and out of the lottery.

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