Lakers News: LA's Tuesday Pre-Draft Group Includes All-MVC First Teamer

The Lakers continue to explore their options with the draft right around the corner.

I think I've already said "your Los Angeles Lakers are doing their due diligence" and "your Los Angeles Lakers are leaving now stone unturned" ad nauseam in prior pieces unpacking LA's steady stream of pre-draft workouts. LA has held so many pre-draft workouts that I've already run my full gamut of cliched phrases to describe their thoroughness.

So let's just say that your Los Angeles Lakers seem to be competing with only the Indiana Pacers when it comes to exhausting their resources ahead of this season's draft. Unlike Indiana, however, LA doesn't even have a lottery pick at its disposal. Possessors of the Nos. 17 and 47 picks this season, the Lakers very well could be drafting in the first round for the first time in five seasons. Although former 2018 No. 25 pick Moritz Wagner out of Michigan is now a productive backup five, he's peddling his wares on the rebuilding Orlando Magic.

Draft selections under the regime of team president Rob Pelinka have proven to be fairly disposable, thus far at least. It's very rare that, in the win-now era necessitated by the ticking NBA clocks of 30+ year-old LA superstars LeBron James and Anthony Davis, young Lakers draftees even make it to their second contracts while still on the team. So it'll be fascinating to see how the club approaches Thursday night's draft. Will Los Angeles even hold onto both picks, or will the team look to package them in a draft night deal for more veteran help? 

Time will tell.

As of this writing, we don't yet know the identities of all the young players auditioned for the Lakers' cadre of scouts and other front office personnel in their latest pre-draft workout held on Tuesday (after hosting six other draft hopefuls on Monday), but Dave McMenamin of ESPN has revealed one of them: versatile playmaking shooting guard Ben Sheppard of Belmont.

The 6'6" wingman fits the profile of the kinds of players Pelinka seems to prefer: big, defense-first athletes with three-point range. 

A 2022-23 All-Missouri Valley Conference and All-Defense selection, Sheppard averaged a college career-most 18.8 points on .475/.415/.684 shooting splits, 2.9 assists and 1.4 steals in 32 games last season, all starts. We'll see if he gets a meaningful opportunity at the next level soon enough.

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