2018 NBA Mock Draft: If need were all that mattered

The Lakers’ need is purely positional. With Lonzo Ball, Brandon Ingram, Josh Hart and Kyle Kuzma, the team has young players at just about every position. The player they’re missing? A dominant, two-way center.

Brook Lopez played well as a fill-in for Los Angeles this year in one of the best defensive seasons of his career. After coming out of nowhere to turn 33 percent of his shot attempts into 3s with Brooklyn two seasons, Lopez increased that number to nearly half his shots as a Laker. He made 35 percent of those looks, helping the team manufacture spacing even with Ball and Julius Randle crumpling the floor.

Will Robinson be a similar player? Probably not — the New Orleanian big man is the draft’s big mystery, flashing outrageous defensive statistics as a high-schooler but remaining anonymous throughout the draft process. He should be solid as rim-to-rim center if he handles the transition from high school to the NBA, but he has the skill to expand beyond that.

If he does, the Lakers could become a truly fearsome young team. Ball, Hart, Ingram and Robinson would form a versatile, modern defense, with offensive upside in the form of Ingram and Kuzma. Considering they could also add a superstar to this core over the summer, it’s a safe bet to assume we’ll be talking about this Lakers team more over the next year.

Robinson could be the final piece to make it all click.