Should Los Angeles Lakers tank remaining games?

Don’t worry Los Angeles Lakers fans, this terrible season is almost over.

With only three regular season game remaining, the Los Angeles Lakers are about to finish off the worst season the franchise has had since moving to Los Angeles.

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The Lakers currently sit at a pitiful 21-58 with games remaining against the Dallas Mavericks and Sacramento Kings (twice). They will probably lose to the Mavericks tonight, but the two games against the Kings will be very winnable as Sacramento has decided to shut down their two best players – DeMarcus Cousins and Rudy Gay – for the remainder of the season.

Some Los Angeles fans weren’t on board with the whole idea of tanking once the season began, but those people definitely jumped ship at some point in the season. The Lakers set the tone to the season in their first 10 games when they started 1-9, and the rest of the season continued that way as every week felt like another long losing streak.

However, there is a lot of positive in this terrible season. The Lakers are still paying for that genius Steve Nash trade (sarcasm aside, it looks terrible now but it was fine at the time) and this year’s first round pick was supposed to go to the Phoenix Suns (who have now traded it to the pick-hoarding Philadelphia 76ers) as long as it wasn’t in the top five draft spots. So basically, if there ever was a year for the Lakers to tank, this was the year.

Fortunately for the franchise, the team has got the job done (for the most part) and are locked in with the fourth-worst (or best, in their position) record in the league. It took a lot of missed jumpers, blown defensive assignments and other basketball mishaps – but the true MVP to this terrible season must go to Byron Scott who brought the tank to new heights with his terrible lows.

Because of how the draft lottery works, the Lakers still aren’t guaranteed to keep their pick even though they have the fourth-worst record. The lottery draft is all about odds, and the fourth spot comes with a 82.8 percent chance of being in the top five. Those are the type of odds you can deal with. They are high enough so that the Lakers should keep the pick, and if they don’t you just have to accept it. They also have a 37.7 percent chance of getting into the top three and a 11.9 percent chance of getting the number one overall pick.

It would be a miracle if the Lakers got the top pick and were able to draft someone like Karl-Anthony Towns or Jahlil Okafor, but keeping the pick is really the only thing that matters. This is a team that is totally rebuilding, and those cheap rookie contracts are a huge part of that puzzle.

Julius Randle (who the Lakers selected with the 7th pick in last year’s draft) broke his league in the first game of this season, so keeping the pick would essentially mean that they Lakers would have two fresh rookies for next year.

The importance of the Lakers keeping this pick cannot be stressed enough. Hearing their named called outside of the top five at the draft lottery would be devastating.

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