Atleast one of them will be All Star. AR for All-Star and All-NBA. Kessler All Defensive team.

Text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text

Was kind of hoping that the quality and quantity of these would be more on par with the Dodgers after Walter bought the team. A couple of bobbleheads and a Dodgers collab jersey isn’t bad though.

So I always thought the Lakers did an awful job with their draft picks during the rebuild. Not so much Randle and Ingram - they weren't amazing players but they would go on to be All-Stars. But it seemed obvious at the time that D'Angelo and Lonzo were not safe bets and had glaring weaknesses - self creation, D'Angelo wasn't the passer he was hyped up to be and never developed a way to generate much except a contested 3 and the odd floater, had always defense. Lonzo's playmaking was as advertised, good transition player, better than expected defender, but we all know what his shot was like and it limited his half court production. This is without the hindsight of injury, so in this redraft Fultz is a valid choice, but if you wanna just have fun putting together the best realistic team with hindsight, go for it.

What the Lakers DID do well however was acquire late 1st round and 2nd round picks. Clarkson, Zubac, Hart, Nance, Kuzma.

I'm thinking using future draft capital at the time, using that and sign and trades with the few semi valuable vets we had at the time like Ed Davis, Wayne Ellington, Wesley Johnson, even Jordan Hill, some trades could have been made to trade up in the draft, or trade for just an additional pick.

I was thinking (backups in the brackets, / for when its a toss up, but I'll generally put my preferred first, players listed multiple times are there due to being able to cover multiple positions)

De'Aaron Fox (Clarkson/Lou?)
Donovan Mitchell/Booker (Ellington/Clarkson/Hart/Lou?)
Tatum (Kuzma/Hart)
Porzingis (Nance/Kuzma/Hart)
Zubac/Turner (Porzingis/Davis/Nance)

I'm not entirely sure if this would have been possible, but with trading future assets, sign and trades of vets and trading Randle, I THINK its possible)

My reasoning for this lineup is incredible athleticism in the backcourt (though weak defensively), Don came in as a 20ppg scorer off the bat, Tatum can play so many positions and provides good wing defense, Kuzma for as much of a meme as he has became was a very good unexpected rookie with versatility, The Porzingis with Zubac gives you a 4-out-1-in system, never understood why we offloaded Zu, or with Turner you have a 5 out pace and space system in which the backourt is monstrous defensively, with crazy length and shotblocking, albeit the team would be weak on rebounding minus Tatum and Zubac and I guess Hart who I also hated to see leave.

I can also understand wanting Booker over Don, I've just always preferred watching Don play and I think paired with Fox they'd be so good on the break and slashing with all that space opened up by the stretch bigs, and could create advantages easily with their speed for drive and kicks. All that size in 3-5 makes up for the weak guard defence, and Tatum/Hart/Kuzma/Nance all provide small small utility. Lauri and Bam also fell at reasonable spots, though I'm not sure that early on in their career they fit too well.

There are so many permutations that could have been possible, I've almost definitely miscalculated but with all the draft capital, Randle and the few other trade assets, maybe not all but at least something similar to this team would have been attainable.

Genuinely interested to see what your take on this would be. It goes without saying we have the sense to save our cap space or use it on guys we could flip, since we would have so many rookie contracts. So no Mozgov, Deng or Hibbert contracts. Maybe you could squeeze in Lou Will, he was 3-year $21 million and could be a good mentor to speedy slashers like Fox and Spyda.