Anyone who thinks having that pick top 5 protected somehow makes the Lakers predicament okay is an absolute homer.
If the Lakers are utterly putrid and get, say, Pick #4, they are safe. If the Lakers are really, really bad and get, say, Pick #7, they get nothing for being really, really bad.
The line between being utterly putrid and really, really bad is pretty thin.
And besides, the Lakers could be utterly putrid and still land outside the top 5 picks. There is no guarantee.
The Lakers traded the 2015 pick (to Pheonix) and the 2017 pick (to Orlando) because management thought those picks would be really low because they figured a healthy Steve Nash would still be teaming with Dwight Howard, Kobe Bryant and Pau Gasol winning tons of regular season games and championships in 2015 and 2017. If they knew how it would have played out, they would have never traded those picks.
Top 5 protected or not, any team with the roster the Lakers are about to roll out with want their draft pick. 100%.
Trading those picks was a Jim Buss gamble that wen't totally and utterly wrong.
The Lakers will enter the off-season with, chances are, Julius Randle and cap space and nothing else. Yes, LA is a lure. But I don't know if the current Lakers ownership has the same pull factor that Dr. Buss traditionally had.
