Lakers add former top-five draft pick after botched Mark Williams trade

The Lakers will waive the oft-injured Christian Wood to free up a roster spot for the onboarding center. While Len has been a backup for the majority of his career, he still provides the Lakers with an upgrade over any of their other non-Jaxson Hayes big men and should be able to hold a steady role for head coach J.J. Redick moving forward. 

The fifth overall pick of the 2013 NBA Draft by the Phoenix Suns, Len never quite popped. Despite never quite "popping," however, there is a reason Len has stuck around the NBA for more than a decade. Not every lottery pick extends their career to 12-plus years, so while Len has never sniffed All-Star status, he has demonstrated that he can be, at the very least, useful. 

Now, playing alongside two of the all-time greatest playmakers and distributors in LeBron James and Luka Doncic, Len could be in store for some of the easiest looks and finishes he’s been afforded in his career. Expectations should be tempered, but there's no reason to believe that Len can’t make the most of his opportunity with the Lakers and continue to show himself to be perfectly useful.

Len is far from the addition that Mark Williams would’ve been — he’s 31 and at the tail end of his career and has averaged double-digit scoring just once before — but when you're as desperate for an interior presence as the Lakers are, you call a guy like Len. At 7-feet and 250 pounds, he at least fills some of the Lakers' needs.