The Los Angeles Lakers will need a lot of things to go right in order to return themselves to the championship standard the franchise is known for. The team has to recruit better free agents than it has over the last several years, nail the second overall pick in the 2016 NBA draft, and use other methods like getting lucky with non-lottery picks and undrafted free agents to acquire talent on the margins of the roster.
That last area is where Los Angeles has already made strides in recent years. The jury is still out on 2015 second round pick Anthony Brown, but the front office knocked their other two non-lottery selections out of the park by selecting Jordan Clarkson (the 46th overall pick in the 2014 NBA Draft) and Larry Nance, Jr. (the 27th overall pick in the 2015 NBA Draft).
Aside from outplaying most players selected in their draft slot, one other thing Nance, Jr. and Clarkson have in common are chips on their shoulders producing a seemingly insatiable hunger to improve (and prove those who doubted them wrong in the process). Whether or not that's a quality Mitch Kupchak, Jim Buss, and the rest of the personnel department look for is unknown, but it's paid off for them so far.
Both Clarkson and Nance, Jr. wasted almost no time getting back in the gym following the season, and the former was back in the Lakers' practice facility on Wednesday night, looking to the upper levels for motivation:
Currently... pic.twitter.com/vlYlwKRYgm
— Larry Nance Jr (@Larrydn22) May 26, 2016
Summer workouts like the one Nance, Jr. was presumably participating in when snapping this photo are the types of habits all of Los Angeles' young players will have to develop if they want to add to the team's trophy collection. Nance, Jr. seems to understand that, which is good news for the Lakers.
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