The Los Angeles Lakers have a plan in place if they lose their pick to the Philadelphia 76ers on the night of the lottery on May 16th. The pick is top-3 protected.

"Listen, I think you have to be prepared for whatever scenario when you're looking at a random event like the lottery," Rob Pelinka said Thursday during exit interviews at the team's practice facility.

"People are asking, 'Do you guys have to have to that pick?' That's something that I get asked at every single game. I think we're prepared to have it, and we also have a plan if we don't."

He added, "I think for us, if we get the lottery balls to bounce our way, yes, we have a great attack-plan for the draft. But if we don't, just like [many famous] sports moments, we have to find a way, and we do have a plan, to still get to where our ultimate destination is without the draft pick."

The Lakers picked up a first round pick from the Houston Rockets for Lou Williams.

"I think the beauty of what [Lakers president of basketball operations] Earvin [Johnson] was able to pull off before I accepted the position of general manager [is] we have, no matter what, we have a first-round pick this year," Pelinka said. "So we're already in a position of strength. And then if that top-three ping-pong ball enters our way, we have a number of contingencies of how that can play out.

"And if it doesn't, then again, we have our fallback position of a first-round pick already, and then we would have our pick in 2018. I think I had said to someone the other day the destination of getting to a championship might be like a Rubik's Cube. You're looking at this thing and it's got all these different colors and you've got to get them to all line up. There's 1,000 different ways to turn the cube and to get it so it all lines up, but you're going to eventually do. Maybe you have the pick; maybe you don't.

"But you have to continue to make moves and turn it until you have that complete perfect picture, and that's what we're doing every day, and that's what we're analyzing and looking at."