3. Marc Gasol is in the top-10 in win shares for players drafted by the Los Angeles Lakers
One of the last things you associate Marc Gasol with when evaluating his NBA career is the Los Angeles Lakers. You might think of his long tenure with the Memphis Grizzlies, his NBA Championship year with the Toronto Raptors or even his brother, Pau, who is now a Laker legend.
The last thing that you might remember is that Gasol was originally slated to be a Laker and then was traded for his brother so the Lakers could compete for the NBA Championship.
The Lakers selected Gasol with the 48th pick in the 2007 NBA Draft but he never suited up for the team despite being traded the following February. He spent his first season after being drafted in Europe and was traded to the Grizzlies for Pau, signing with them the following summer and starting a potential Hall of Fame career of his own.
This was not a draft-day trade where the Lakers technically traded him beforehand but ‘drafted’ him. Gasol was technically a Laker for eight months, despite never appearing in a game.
The craziest part about this is that if you look up all of the Lakers’ draft picks and sort them by win shares then you will see that Gasol is ranked 10th. Of all the players in franchise history that have been drafted by the Lakers, Marc Gasol has the 10th-most win shares.
He has more win shares than the likes of James Worthy, Gail Goodrich, Derek Fisher and Nick Van Exel, just to name a few. And unlike any of those players listed, Gasol has never suited up in the purple and gold.