In horrible news, Lamar Odom's 6½-month-old son Jayden died in his sleep on Wednesday night. Obviously, our hearts and best wishes go out to Lamar and his entire family during this terrible time.

—AK

But either way, Jordan Farmar is stoked out of his mind. And can you blame him? A Taft High kid who gets to go from UCLA to the Los Angeles Lakers. Don't get much better than that if you're a homebody, which Farmar seems to be. And the Lakers seem pretty tickled as well, having not expected the sophomore point guard to even be an option. The surprise was typical of a draft that was nothing short of turbulent. That he landed in their laps strikes the franchise as pretty good fortune. Throw in the fact that they turned the No. 51 pick into Maurice Evans, a guy they know can play in the league, and the Lakers are walking away from the proceedings feeling pretty good. And FYI, the drafting of Farmar doesn't automatically end the prospect of signing the much-blogged-about Marcus Banks.

Some of you have already pointed this out, but I wanted to wait to see it officially confirmed by more than one source. The Lakers have indeed traded the draft rights to the ultra-lanky Cheick Samb to the Pistons for SG Maurice Evans. While you may one day lament losing the best player to ever emerge from Senegal, for the time being, Evans ain't a bad pick up. Fairly athletic guy, solid defender, works hard. Frankly, I was surprised that Flip Saunders didn't give him more PT during the playoffs, especially given how slow Detroit looked against Miami. He doesn't automatically solve the Lakers' problems by any means, but I imagine he'll be a nice rotation guy.

We also traded a future second-round pick to the Mavs for some cat named Danilo (J.R.) Pinnock. Went to GW. Neither BK or I have heard of him. But he's apparently a 2-guard that Chad Ford didn't see making it in Dallas. Who knows how he'll fare with the Lakers?

As you were.

—AK

... which is actually the living room of my apartment. AK is on the way over, having finished his radio appearance. We've already seen a trade, Ric Bucher says it's the Italian guy at No. 1, and that Morrison is going to Portland. Why even bother with all this?

4:08: Question to Rachel Nicholls — "What did Michael Jordan learn from the Kwame Brown pick?"

I've been watching for about two minutes, and already they're making fun of Kwame. Tough crowd.

I can't believe all the time they're spending on who the number one pick will be. Aren't folks more interested in No. 26? Isn't the 26th pick the lynchpin of the whole operation?

4:11: Stephen A. Smith takes a shot at Kwame. Good lord, over five hours, K.B. could end up like a pin cushion. It's never a good thing when you become a human cautionary tale...

4:12: Dick Vitale mangles Nik Tskitishvili's name about seven times in a three minute segment. I might not have spelled it right, but I know I can pronounce it correctly. I just did. You'll just have to take my word on that. By the way, if it takes AK a few minutes to get here, it's because I sent him to the Sev-Lev to pick up some War Room Snacks. I freaked out when I heard the ESPN guys say they'd be on the air for the next five hours. The Lakers Blog War Room isn't stocked with those sorts of provisions.

Celtics pick up Sebastian Telfair for the No. 7 and a bunch of undetermined dudes, one of whom may be Dan Dickau. 

—BK

... he'll join the live blog. We'll be starting when the coverage starts, which unless I'm wrong is around 4:00 p.m.

—BK

...especially for a dude pimping himself. So help a brother out, por favor.

I'll be a guest today on "The Big Show with Mason and Ireland." Probably about seven or eight minutes worth of me babbling. We'll be discussing the NBA draft and who/what the Lakers need, want, might be selecting, etc. And if there's time left afterward for a long, complicated debate, whether or not they should lock up free agent Jim Jackson with a max deal.

3:40 p.m., KSPN-AM (710) on your radio dial. Then about 10 minutes later, you can turn on the actual draft and watch all my predictions end up completely wrong, similar to when I told Mike Bresnahan in October that Aaron McKie would end up a solid signing (although I did stress the disclaimer of "if he's healthy.")

Hope y'all can make it.

—AK

It's draft day. The day "wingspan" is thrown around like the entire world has morphed into keynote speakers at an Audubon Society convention. There's also makeup. Upside. Explosion. Draft analysts talk about "motor" like they're breaking down a Chevy, not a point guard. Am I missing any?   

Use them around the water cooler today, and you can sound like a basketball Mel Kiper Jr.

But until 4:30 p.m. rolls around, it's all conjecture. With that in mind, here are a whole slew of mock drafts to tide you over, with the Lakers' projected pick in ().

The new stuff is down at the bottom...

Lakers GM Mitch Kupchak powwowed with the media this afternoon, and just to make sure the Times doesn't think we're stealing from them, AK and I decided to stop by. We'll have more up for you ASAP, but for the time being, here's a smattering of what he had to say. As you might guess, most of the questions centered around the draft. Go figure.

On moving up:
"I think everybody wants to move up. I've talked to every GM in the league, sometimes several times. Everybody wants to move up. There's a cost associated with moving up, whether it's a player or another pick. At the end of the day it doesn't happen very frequently." 

Is it something you'll try to pursue?
"Yeah, we'd like to move up. I think every time you're in the draft, if you're at 26, you wish you were at 25. If you're 25, you wish you were at 20. You always look and say, "Wow, I wish I had a little better pick than I actually have." Last year we were at 10, and I'd have felt more comfortable if we could have gotten to eight, although we got the player we wanted at 10. So that's just the way your mind works this time of year.  You never have a great level of comfort with who you're gonna get and who you like, because you don't know what the other GMs think. You don't know exactly who is going to fall to you when draft time rolls around."

That's what Lakers Blog ended up getting at last night's Southern California Journalism Awards. Your winner for Individual Weblog? The legal blog. But I think we handled the loss pretty well. BK responded by screaming an obscenity and flipping the table over, while I stormed the stage, ripped the award out of J.Craig Williams' hands, clocked him in the face and cried, "Blog the legal implications of that, bee-yotch!!!"

Or BK and I sat at our table and politely clapped, if you're into that whole "accurate depiction of the evening" thing.

However, there was a funny twist to the night and it's 100% true. In what I imagine will be hugely pleasing news for most of you, the award for "Sportswriter of the Year" went to T.J. Simers. And after each winner was announced, an audio clip of their work was played. So what did the L.A. Press Club choose for their Simers snippet? Part of the article he wrote at the beginning of the season mocking this very blog. I imagine this was pure coincidence, since the people picking the clips were probably the same people who nominated us in the first place. But we were totally cracking up.

Either way, it was nice to represent.

—AK