Lakers set themselves to succeed.

The Los Angeles Lakers are one of the greatest franchises of all time, known for having fantastic big men, winning records, and a myriad of championships, but this season has been the complete opposite for them. With their loss to the Timberwolves, they have a 24-48 record, putting them as the 14th team in the West, only ahead of the atrocious Jazz. Whilst this season was never planned to be a fantastic year in Laker lore, it was never meant to be as bad as this. They dealt without having their All-Star Kobe Bryant for all but 6 games of the season, before dealing with another injury, which will keep him out until next season, a slow start from Power Forward Pau Gasol, who has looked decent since the All-Star break, but not fantastic enough to make a significant difference, endless injuries to players, which has generally kept their roster lacking, even to the point where they had an eight man roster, and have had to deal with their abysmal coach, Mike D'Antoni.

However, they've really set themselves up to succeed within the next 2 seasons. Firstly, with their awful record, they've set themselves up to get into the top 5 in the upcoming draft, and can get someone such as Joel Embiid, Jabari Parker, Dante Exum, Andrew Wiggins, Marcus Smart or Julius Randle. Drafting any of those will be able to build a young core to build around, when Kobe retires in a year or two's time. Then there's this seasons FA, which has Kyle Lowry, Trevor Ariza, Marcin Gortat, Richard Jefferson, Carmelo Anthony, Mike Miller, Nate Robinson, Spencer Hawes, Kirk Hinrich, Josh McRoberts and Danny Granger. With only a couple of players that actually have contracts with the Lakers for next season, they're going to have a lot of cap space. This will allow them to sign a lot of players, to help stack their bench, and give them higher winning chances. Then the season afterwards, Kevin Love is a FA, and has showed interest in playing with the Lakers. If you sign him the season after, you have a solid foundation to build around, and can give you a fantastic offense, and hopefully, an imposing defense too. All together, the Lakers have allowed themselves a chance to really win, and for Kobe to win his sixth ring, unless they draft poorly, and don't manage to sign some good FA's.

Nathan Clover