In more recent Los Angeles Lakers history the NBA Draft has served as more of a tool to gain assets for future trades as opposed to bringing in and developing young talent. But that is with good reason as for much of the past 25 years the Lakers have been competing for NBA Championships and thus, haven’t had the room to really give young players that time to grow.
That doesn’t mean the Lakers haven’t been able to find contributors as the early-to-mid 2000s saw them find the likes of Luke Walton (2003), Sasha Vujacic (2004), Andrew Bynum (2005) and Jordan Farmar (2006), all of whom would play a role in the Lakers’ back-to-back championship run in 2009 and 2010.