It's not like the Clippers don't have experience at making lottery picks. In the past 10 years, they've made 10 lottery picks. One year, they made two.
It's just that this year's dip into the deep end of the NBA draft's talent pool wasn't part of anyone's long-range schedule for the team following their breakthrough year in 2005-06. Then Shaun Livingston's knee buckled and Elton Brand's Achilles tendon ruptured, part of a series of unfortunate events that derailed the Clippers the past two seasons.
But late June always offers a consolation prize for those who experience misfortune during the regular season, and Thursday night the Clippers will try and make the most of that opportunity with the seventh overall pick in the NBA draft.
"The payoff to all of it is coming up with a good player for your future. And we're going to get a good player,"
Clippers coach Mike Dunleavy said.
Who exactly that player will be depends on several key factors: Whether Miami makes a trade, either for the No. 2 pick or involving Shawn Marion; how much the team believes that Elton Brand and Corey Maggette - both of whom can opt out of their contracts June 30 - will be back in Los Angeles next season; and what the other six teams ahead of them in the draft do.
The answers to the first and third questions will come swiftly over the next two days, but the Brand and Maggette situations require a leap of faith.
Dunleavy and general manager Elgin Baylor said they are operating under the assumption that both players will be back in Los Angeles next year. Both players are working out daily at the Clippers' practice facility in Manhattan Beach, doing about the same thing as the club is with the situation: waiting to see how the draft plays out.
"I don't know anything yet,"
Brand said Tuesday. "When's the draft, Thursday? Well, call me on Friday."
The team's most obvious need is at point guard. Livingston only recently got clearance to begin basketball-related activities and the team has not decided whether to extend him a qualifying offer for next season. Brevin Knight and Dan Dickau are better suited to be backups.
Not surprisingly, most of the high-profile players the Clippers worked out over the past couple of weeks were guards. The list includes USC'sO.J. Mayo, UCLA's Russell Westbrook, Texas' D.J. Augustin, Indiana's Eric Gordon and Arizona's Jerryd Bayless.
But that doesn't necessarily mean the Clippers will draft a guard.
"We've got to come away from this with something good,"
Dunleavy said. "When you're picking seventh, you better go for the best guy available. If you draft just for need, you're liable to take yourself down a couple notches. You may get someone that's serviceable, but long-term, you'll be regretting it."
The Clippers have had a couple of the draft's more intriguing prospects - 7-foot French center Alexis Ajinca, 7-foot Nevada center JaVale McGee, and 6-foot-9 LSU center Anthony Randolph - in for workouts. They've also taken a long look at UCLA center Kevin Love, though he's not expected to fall out of the top five.
Dunleavy said the Clippers are unlikely to take a gamble on an unproven prospect, as they did in 2005 by taking Yaroslav Korolev with the 12thoverall pick. Korolev played in only 34 games in his two seasons with the club, and is now back in a Russian league.
"The guy can be young, but we gotta know he can play,"
Dunleavy said. "There's a couple guys in the draft that I think have big-time potential that aren't going to be ready for a couple years. If that's the case, I don't think that'd be a guy for us. We want a guy with upside, but who can give us some minutes right away. You'd like to draft a guy in this position, who can ultimately be a starter for you."
After all, this isn't a rebuilding project. If Brand and Maggette are both back next season, most of the core of the 2005-06 team that came within a game of knocking Phoenix out in the second round of the playoffs would be back.
"The only thing that will revitalize anybody and everybody is winning games,"
Dunleavy said. "You could draft somebody from your hometown, you could draft a name, you could draft whoever. But if you want people on your bandwagon, go win games. That's how I look at it, and that's going to be what we do."
Meanwhile, across town, the Lakers will have a draft party of their own, but don't expect many fireworks. The Lakers have only one pick in the draft, No. 58, after shipping their first-round pick to the Memphis Grizzlies as part of the Pau Gasol trade.
"I'm trying to move up to 57or 56,"
Lakers general manager Mitch Kupchak joked last week. "We seem to embrace the draft when it comes. We always feel like we can get a player, whether it's in the 20s or in the 30s and, quite frankly, we'll get somebody at 58 ... But I think our primary concern is addressing our free-agent situation during the offseason."
Kupchak said that he'd explore moving up in the draft if there was a player the Lakers particularly liked. Even so, the Lakers don't have many future draft picks to entice another team.
"You could always trade a pick for a pick, but we already traded two first-round picks to get Pau, so you would be talking about something five or six years down the road,"
he said. "There are a bunch teams in the NBA that have multiple picks. Maybe they would look at changing a second for a second, which wouldn't get us into the first round. It would just get us closer, or a better pick in the second round."
That said, expect the phones to be quite a bit busier in the Clippers' war room at Staples Center on Thursday than at the Lakers' headquarters in El Segundo.
"We really haven't talked to anybody yet,"
Baylor said. "Nobody's been calling us. Everyone's pretty much waiting to see what happens. But between now and the draft, a lot of teams will be calling, and a lot of things could happen."
Good thing the Clippers have experience in this kind of situation.
