The NBA Draft is a time of smoke and mirrors as everyone talks to everyone about everyone’s intentions but their own.
This can be done when general managers want to bad mouth a player anonymously to get them to drop to them in the draft, or to potentially drive down the value around the league of a player they want by leaking that they’re available for pennies and killing that player’s team’s leverage in talks with other organizations.
That’s not necessarily what’s happening in the case of the rumors the Lakers might trade D’Angelo Russell for a top-12 pick, but that leak certainly didn’t come from the Lakers.