2026 NBA Draft Lottery Preview: LA Clippers
Nathan and Rowan sort through several possible prospects for the LA Clippers with their lucky #5 pick for the No Ceilings Draft Lottery Preview series for the 2026 NBA Draft.
Rowan: If it wasn’t over when Paul George left in free agency, I think we can finally say it: it’s a new era in Clippers land. Now, that’s not exactly true: the team still made the play-in, Kawhi Leonard looked truly stupendous during the season, and the team had the 11th-ranked offensive rating in the NBA this season. On the other hand, the team moved James Harden for Darius Garland in a move that represented their lack of belief in their veteran core and traded away their stalwart center in Ivica Zubac. LA really would have been up the creek with no paddle, or rather no lottery pick, due to the continued curse of the Paul George trade, if not for a stunning work of general managing to land Indiana’s pick with the right protections to net them the fifth overall pick in this draft. Now, instead of a bare cupboard, the Clippers are in a prime position to draft a blue-chip player to add to their team.
Who they should draft is obviously the hard part to figure out. Most of this roster, from Kris Dunn and Derrick Jones Jr. to John Collins and Brook Lopez, are either veterans who won’t fit as well in a rebuild or are long past their primes. On the other hand, the team would appear to have the makings of a promising young backcourt with Darius Garland and Bennedict Mathurin. LA will operate in whatever direction that Leonard decides to go, but he’s a versatile enough player that he could likely keep up his high-level play next to virtually any type of lineup.
With most of the players in this tier being guards, should the Clippers thumb their nose at positional fits and take the best player available? Who may that be? And if they do try to fill out their lineup, who else might fit for them at #5?
Nathan: No matter the position the LA Clippers find themselves in, the answer this high in the draft is always taking the best talent available, no questions asked.
Everyone’s board is going to look a bit different at this portion of the draft. After the star-studded collection of talent in Cameron Boozer, AJ Dybantsa, Darryn Peterson, and Caleb Wilson, it appears as though we’re headed for a slew of guards emerging from the green room. Darius Acuff Jr., Keaton Wagler, Mikel Brown Jr., Brayden Burries, and Kingston Flemings all have arguments to be taken as high as fifth overall in the draft.
As I mentioned, though, everyone’s board is different. I, for example, have Yaxel Lendeborg as the fifth-best TALENT in this class. Now, given that he’ll be clocking in at 24 years of age to start his rookie season, I’d be utterly stunned if the Clippers actually took him at that spot, given the other younger options on the board.
But as you aptly noted, Rowan, this team has solidified a new direction in the backcourt with Darius Garland and Bennedict Mathurin, two players acquired via trade at this past deadline. I wouldn’t let those two players stop me from taking who I thought was the best overall player left on the board, but there may be a way for LA to draft for both fit and talent with Wagler in particular.
Before I lay out the case for Wagler, that comes with a major caveat. For the team’s best players to share the floor in that scenario, that would mean someone might have to play a bit out of position. Garland is a lead guard given his size and how he lines up positionally on the defensive end. Kawhi Leonard is honestly best at this point in his career as a power forward, given he has the strength and length to make it work while also having more freedom to roam on defense rather than chase wing shooters. Mathurin is the player who might be the trickier fit defensively. If you’re comfortable with putting him on bigger wings at that small forward spot, then the Wagler selection could really be a homerun that’s great for all parties.
But if Mathurin is best as a shooting guard in between a lead option and a more defensive-minded wing, then Wagler would be spending most of his minutes coming off the bench, alternating in substitution patterns with Mathurin.
Again, that’s not stopping me from taking whoever the best guy on the board is, but it’s an interesting wrinkle to consider when building out the rest of the roster.
Back to Wagler. He’s a 6’6” guard out of Illinois who wasn’t heralded as a top-shelf recruit out of high school. Still, he earned his spot as the team’s primary decision maker with an injury to Kylan Boswell around the early-mid part of the college season. When Wagler was handed the keys, he took off, and so did the rest of the team around him. Wagler stepped up as not only a table setter for the rest of the established veterans around him, but as a lethal shooting option with one of the best go-to moves in this entire draft class in the step-back three.
Wagler has the frame, creative ball-handling, footwork, and shooting ability to become a special weapon in the NBA. As we’ve seen in the playoffs, teams need several creative handlers on the court at all times, so seeing Garland and Wagler work off one another would be a treat around Leonard’s mid-post style offensive game.
Even though Wagler has been the most popular mock to the Clippers, I’m not entirely convinced that’s the direction this franchise would go. What are your thoughts on the guards available in this range, Rowan, and are there any other players at different positions you’d consider as high as #5 in the 2026 draft?
Rowan: Asking my thoughts on the guards in this range would require a bit more space than we’ve got here, sadly, but that’s because of how great I think the players in this range truly are. While I’m sure every NBA team was hoping for a Top 4 pick in this draft, the guards in this class are far from a consolation prize. As you mentioned above, everyone’s board will look different when you get down to the brass tacks, and even the Clippers will have their own internal draft board, which will have to parse out which of the talented players in the draft’s second tier they rank highest.
For me, I have a few players over Keaton Wagler, but we’re talking about the thinnest of margins. I’ve got Mikel Brown Jr. and Darius Acuff Jr. over Wagler on my own personal board, but that doesn’t mean that I think both should go to the Clippers over Wagler. In fact, while I agree with your take on LA taking the best player available, I wonder how feasible that could be if the team decides that Acuff Jr., or even Kingston Flemings, is the fifth-best player in this draft.
I think it’s more feasible for the team to draft Wagler, as you detailed, given he can play in some small-ball lineups or get a ton of touches off the bench. For Acuff Jr., who I really like, this spot would be one of the more befuddling unless the team moved Darius Garland. Trying to have a backcourt of Garland, Acuff Jr., and Mathurin would stress the backline of the defense for the Clippers too much for me to see an easy path to winning, even though I do love Acuff Jr. as a draft prospect.
Instead, while I think Wagler would do wonders with the Clippers, I would be more inclined to have the team draft Mikel Brown Jr. out of Louisville. Although he labored through some back issues and just played on a team with a loaded backcourt, I think that Brown Jr. has both the positional size necessary to form some potent lineups with the rest of the team’s backcourt options and could, if he reaches his ceiling, be the best player of the aforementioned potential trio. To grossly simplify his ceiling, Brown Jr. has the top-end athleticism of Bennedict Mathurin and the pull-up shooting potential of Darius Garland, combined in one player.
He’d be able to play next to either Garland or Mathurin, while also having the savvy to run a bench offense that could be a major strength for LA. It will obviously swing upon whether he’s healed enough from his back issues, but having heard that he has, I’d consider Brown Jr. quite heavily. By the same token, I’d also want to look into Arizona’s Brayden Burries, given he has the size and versatility needed to play alongside multiple players on this LA roster, while also having the creation chops needed to be a valuable sparkplug at the NBA level.
Outside of guards, I’d be reaching a bit on my own board at this spot. From a roster perspective, however, the Clippers do have a bit of a hole in the middle. They traded away Ivica Zubac to get this pick, which means they could fill it with a future franchise center. I do think this would be a different conversation if Jayden Quaintance were healthy, as he put up some truly jaw-dropping defensive tape last season for Arizona State, but his lingering knee issues are enough to understand him sliding down a few draft slots.
Instead, I could see a player like Michigan’s Aday Mara being a dark-horse sleeper for the fifth pick. He’s got a massive frame, has the fluidity needed to protect the rim and score easily around it, and has shown great defensive tools for a winning team this season. I was high on Mara when he first became eligible for the 2024 NBA draft, but his quiet years at UCLA did blunt my assessment of his game. A strong campaign for my alma mater has reawakened my love for his game, even if I do think his ceiling as a center is debatable in the long run.
Nathan, how do you see the fits of guards like Mikel Brown Jr. and Brayden Burries on this Clippers team? Do you think either of Darius Acuff Jr. or Kingston Flemings could work in any way? And what about Mara at five? Too rich for your blood or just the wrong Michigan Wolverine?
Nathan: What I would say about Mikel Brown Jr. and Brayden Burries specifically is that no one on this roster should be stopping the LA Clippers from taking the player they deem the best talent on the board, even if the immediate short-term fit is potentially questionable. Brown arguably has the highest ceiling of any guard in this class, which is wild to think about given all of the options we’ve laid out in the mid-late lottery range. He reminds me of all of the BEST qualities that I saw in LaMelo Ball before he came to the NBA. His creativity, shooting range, and speed/athleticism blend into a package that doesn’t really have a comparison in this class. He can just do things these other guards can’t if he’s hitting on all cylinders, making him an appealing option at any point in this lottery.
I’ve personally risen on Burries as this cycle has gone on, particularly after having a refresher of what the NBA Playoffs actually entail from a physicality standpoint. Burries isn’t afraid of contact and can finish in traffic. He’s willing to defend multiple positions, take on different assignments, rebound, and quietly grades out pretty well everywhere across play and shot types per Synergy Sports. He has a much more complete package on offense than given credit for, with the type of build (6’5” in shoes, 210-215 pounds) that excels at the guard position in playoff environments. I don’t think it’s crazy for the Clippers to consider him at the fifth spot.
On your point about Aday Mara possibly filling in the hole at the center spot for LA, that’s a swing I wouldn’t particularly be thrilled to make, given the star power on the board with some of these other players. Mara makes basketball look easy at 7’3” with the type of touch and coordination you don’t often see from a player his size. However, while I think he’s going to do some things well during his time in the league, I don’t see a “star” per se in Mara outside of just being a star in his role. Again, it’s very valuable to have skilled size that can hold its own, especially in the playoffs. But teams get burnt when trying to fill a need rather than just taking the best player on the board, even if there’s a positional logjam. With that in mind, the Clippers will have plenty of premier choices at the top—and since the Pacers would have held onto the pick if it had stayed in the Top 4, this is just about the best-case scenario for the Clippers.