Los Angeles Lakers: Grading the 2017 NBA Draft class after rookie year

If the basketball court were a classroom, the Los Angeles Lakers’ group of 2017 draft picks would be very happy with the grades they’d be bringing home after their rookie campaigns.

Despite missing the 2018 NBA Playoffs, this past season was a great one for the Los Angeles Lakers. They put together their first promising effort in years, watching their young core of rising stars shine brighter than most talking heads expected.

While most would prefer to look toward the blindingly bright future, it seems like the right time to take a quick glimpse back at the 2017-18 season. More specifically, I want to look at how the Lakers’ incoming class of rookie performed, handing out grades for what they put on display throughout the year.

Overall, it was an excellent season for the Los Angeles rookies. If they were still in grade school, their parents would all be ecstatic with this report card — except LaVar Ball; I don’t think that man is ever truly satisfied unless a camera is in his face and he’s at the top of the day’s trending news. Any normal parent, though, would be pleased.

Now that we’ve got that all out in the open, let’s look at my grades for the Lakers’ 2017 draft class. This may have been the strongest class across all 30 NBA teams, and my grading speaks to the dominance they displayed at times for one of the league’s up-and-coming franchises.