Five Players the Los Angeles Clippers Could Trade Up For in the Draft

With an abundance of lottery picks and a talented top 10, the Los Angeles Clippers should look into trading up in the 2018 NBA Draft.

The Los Angeles Clippers are in a strange position. Having lost Chris Paul in the summer and  Blake Griffin in January, this current offseason is looking a lot different than most had expected.

First of all, the Clippers are back in the Draft Lottery for the first time since 2010. That year, LA drafted Al-Farouq Aminu with the 8th overall pick. The team landed in the lottery the year before as well, which is when Griffin was taken.

Secondly, the direction of the team is something of an unknown. Obviously playoffs are the goal, but the personnel involved is what’s in question. Doc Rivers‘s future isn’t set in stone, the team is without a clear leader, and with loads of cap space in 2019, the identity of the team could change very quickly.

Surely the Clippers will draft for the future, but even then, that won’t paint a clear picture of their future plans.

Lastly, free agency plans are still unknown. Will the Clippers cut DeAndre Jordan loose? Could Kawhi Leonard really end up in LA? What trades could go down?

One move that could work well for Los Angeles is to attempt to trade up in this year’s draft. The top 10 projected prospects all have loads of talent, and since the quality seems to drop off right around the end of the lottery, moving one or both picks and potentially a few players shouldn’t be out of the question for a team looking towards the future.

For the sake of unpredictability, the details of such trades won’t be explored in this article. Instead, the focus will be placed on the prospects themselves, and who could be the best fit for the LA Clippers.