Lakers News: How Los Angeles Can Use Its Next Pick For A Trade

Will LA be aggressive this summer?

Your Los Angeles Lakers opted not to offload their lone available, tradable draft pick at last month's trade deadline. Instead, the club's front office chose to make marginal changes around the fringes of their roster. LA, lead by team president/general manager Rob Pelinka, signed buyout market free agent point guard Spencer Dinwiddie to a rest-of-year deal and swapping out swingman Dylan Windler in favor of Harry Giles III using one of their two-way contracts.

The benefit of holding onto that pick, even if it stymies the Lakers' chances of improving the current roster a smidge, is that the club will now have three movable first round draft picks it can use in a deal this summer. That should improve the kind of asset the team would be able to acquire.

According to Bobby Marks and Dave McMenamin of ESPN, the New Orleans Pelicans (currently the fifth seed in the Western Conference with a 39-25 record, four games ahead of the 36-30 Lakers, who occupy the ninth seed) have until June 1st to determine if they're going to obtain LA's first round pick in 2024 or '25. The selection was acquired as part of the package that sent Anthony Davis to Los Angeles in the summer of 2019. Using whichever first rounder in 2024 or '25 that New Orleans decides to let the Lakers keep, LA will be able to package that, along with picks in 2029 and '31, in any trade. There's one caveat, per Marks and McMenamin: if the Lakers keep the 2024 pick (which, if they stay in the play-in bracket but fail to make the actual playoffs, would be a lottery selection), they would not be able to trade it until it is used to make a selection in this year's draft.