LA Times

● By Dan Woike

Accuracy: 26.68%36th Place
They’re in the gym, at the games, studying film and speaking to league insiders. The writers who cover these NBA teams, the ones picking in the first round, know what teams need. They know who could be available. They know what types of players these executives like best. Yet similar to everyone else talking about the draft, what you know and what actually happens can shift in a blink, one team going off script changing every pick that follows. For this exercise, our second mock draft, we went to the experts around the NBA to see what they think will happen Thursday night.

Top Players Not Included

These players appear in the top 30 of our

Consensus Big Board

, but do not show up in this mock.