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The Los Angeles Lakers announced that they would work out Matt Farrell of Notre Dame, Zach Lofton of New Mexico State, Justin Johnson of Western Kentucky, Daxter Miles Jr. of West Virginia, Tyler Nelson of Fairfield and Marcus Derrickson of Georgetown on Monday.
It had already leaked that Farrell would be working out, and we now know who will be joining him. This does not appear to be a star-studded class of prospects, as none of the six players the Lakers are looking at in this workout are among the top 100 in the draft, according to the esteemed Jonathan Givony of ESPN.
Still, as has been said time and time again throughout this process, the Lakers are not just looking at guys they can draft. They are also looking for guys for their summer league teams for Las Vegas and Sacramento, as well as their G League squad.
While those two purposes (especially the latter) might not be the types of sexy offseason acquisitions the majority of fans care about, the success the Lakers have had with undrafted players like Andre Ingram and David Nwaba are evidence that their efforts to find diamonds in the rough outside of the draft shouldn’t be dismissed.
Like quite a few of the Lakers’ recent workouts, this one appears to be more of that aforementioned mining for undiscovered gems, but they can’t find guys like that without wading through a bunch of players who are unlikely to break out. This is good due diligence from the front office, even if it isn’t particularly exciting right now.
All stats per sports-reference.com. A full list of every prospect we know the Lakers have worked out is available here. You can follow Harrison on Twitter at @hmfaigen, or support his work via Venmo here or Patreon here.