The Los Angeles Lakers have spent almost the entirety of the Rob Pelinka era playing with top-heavy rosters. Efforts have been made to create depth, and Pelinka deserves endless credit for unearthing hidden gems such as Alex Caruso and Austin Reaves.
Unfortunately, Pelinka's habit of trading draft picks for proven talent has inevitably cost the Lakers the ability to keep up with the trend of homegrown talent defining contenders' success.
It's easy to look at Cade Cunningham, Anthony Edwards, and Jayson Tatum as examples of drafted players who have come to guide their respective franchises to varying degrees of success. The stars and lottery picks are only one piece of the puzzle, however, as teams are making exceptional use of players selected later in the draft.
The Oklahoma City Thunder are a towering example of that truth, as key contributors such as Isaiah Joe, Ajay Mitchell, and Aaron Wiggins were all second-round draft picks.
The Thunder are merely at the forefront of an Association-wide trend, however, that the Lakers are painfully far behind on. Countless teams are turning every asset from lottery picks to second-round selections into cost-efficient talent they can develop within their system and thus avoid an overreliance on free agency and the aging veterans who are all but exclusively available at a lower price point.
For a Lakers team hoping to win championships with Luka Doncic, Pelinka can't afford to part with any further draft assets—and should instead be searching for ways to add more.
Lakers are woefully behind on need to prioritize NBA Draft
Los Angeles has its own first-round draft picks in 2026, 2028, 2030, 2031, and 2032. That allows it to trade a 2031 first-round pick in a potential deal for a proven talent, but it would be wise to hold on to its limited draft assets for the sake of building a sustainably competitive team under a restrictive CBA.
In addition to having just two of its next four first-round draft picks, the Lakers don't currently have a second-round selection at their disposal until 2023.
Los Angeles has admittedly experienced success with paying competitively ahead of schedule for players such as Rui Hachimura and Reaves. Both still secured salaries in the eight-figure range within two years of joining the team, however, thus limiting the Lakers' financial flexibility given the presence of multiple max-level salaries.
Contenders and rising forces around the NBA, meanwhile, are benefiting immensely from taking a more balanced approach to building around their superstars.
The Denver Nuggets, for instance, are witnessing a quiet breakout from Peyton Watson with starter Christian Braun sidelined. Both Braun and Watson were not only drafted after the No. 20 pick by the Nuggets, but are making less than $10 million combined this season.
The Houston Rockets experienced success of their own by drafting All-Star big man Alperen Sengun at No. 16 overall in 2021 and 3-and-D specialist Tari Eason at No. 17 in 2022—paying them less than $8 million combined per season during the four years of their rookie-scale contracts.
Lakers missing out on chance to pay cheap and develop within system
The success stories are endless, due in no small part to the combination of affordability and the opportunity to develop talent within a team's system. Rather than attempting to incorporate free agents at a higher cost into a scheme they're unfamiliar with, coaches are given the chance to mold up-and-coming players into key cogs and tap into their potential over time with limited financial risk.
That also allows the front office to operate more freely in free agency and on the trade market, as they can take chances on players with questionable salaries whose fit they believe in.
Unfortunately, the Lakers lack that luxury and have thus limited their own options for supplementing Doncic's talent. They can't swing for the fences on a player in the way the Thunder did with Isaiah Hartenstein or how the Pistons took a chance on Tobias Harris.
Los Angeles simply can't afford for any of its contracts to prove overvalued when they have such a limited supply of talent in the pipeline to ultimately replace them if things go south over time.
The Lakers could potentially begin to recover from past mistakes by finding promising prospects with their 2026 and 2028 first-round draft picks. It needs to recoup some of its assets, however, as Doncic is eligible for free agency in 2028, Reaves will be paid heftily in 2026, and LeBron James could soon retire—leaving only so much time for Los Angeles to begin developing talent internally.
It's unclear if the Lakers have a realistic path to adding first-round and second-round draft picks to their list of assets, but they must catch up to the trend that's defining the NBA.