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The Lakers held another draft workout on Tuesday with six more prospects coming into the practice facility. Yet again, the Lakers worked out a player expected to be a second round draft pick in Jabari Walker of Colorado, targeting someone the team could look to select should they be able to trade into the draft.
Here’s the full list of the prospects from Tuesday’s workout:
- Terrell Brown Jr. – Washington
- Fabian White Jr. – Houston
- Jabari Walker – Colorado
- Phlandrous Fleming Jr. – Florida
- Darius Days – LSU
- Michael Steadman – UMass
First, we can not go any further without acknowledging the fact that Phlandrous Fleming Jr., is truly a remarkable name. It’s hard to imagine anyone having a better name than him. Still, his game may not reach the same heights as his superstar name.
Here’s a tweet-sized summary of Fleming’s game from Locked on Gators host Brandon Olsen:
Wish I could but…
— Brandon Olsen (@WNS_Brandon) June 14, 2022
He’s not terrible, could be a fine bench guy I think. Wildly inefficient in terms of shot selection and turnovers but if he’s a spot-up 3-and-D guy he’ll be fine.
The standout of the workout, though, is the potential second round pick in Walker. While he wasn’t listed in DraftExpress’ most recent mock draft, he was ranked No. 49 on Sam Vecenie’s big board for The Athletic.
Lakers fan and NBA Draft guru Mike Garcia recently wrote a full piece on Walker for his Substack. Here’s a brief snippet of his article:
Let’s look at that first year advanced row first. His True Shooting Percentage is outrageously high, complimented by a solid free throw rate, an outrageous 18.7% total rebound rate, and 2% steal rate with a 3.7% block rate? That’s just a flat out productive player. It doesn’t tell me if he has shooting range, but it does tell me that he’s willing to do the dirty work, especially in terms of crashing the glass and affecting things defensively. While that combination of numbers is special, I included the per-40 stat line to give it some context and point out the flaw. His per-40 averages for his freshman year translated into 12.2 rebounds, 1.3 steals, and 1.3 blocks, but the big issue here is 6.0 personal fouls per game.
As a 3-and-D prospect, Walker has a lot of upside. For a Lakers team that is in desperate need of wing depth, it makes sense to potentially target a player like Walker. Considering where he ranks in the draft and where the Lakers could be targeting to trade up to, Walker seems like a really interesting prospect to monitor.
For more Lakers talk, subscribe to the Silver Screen and Roll podcast feed on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher or Google Podcasts. You can follow Jacob on Twitter at @JacobRude.
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