The castaways are surviving.
Brandon Ingram? He is the reigning Most Improved Player in the NBA, and improving still. With New Orleans he is averaging 24 points in 35 minutes, both career highs, and his 3-point shooting remains at 39.1 percent. He is 23.
Jordan Clarkson? He brings 17.4 points off the bench for Utah, which is 18-1 since Jan. 7. He is 28.
Lonzo Ball? Maybe he hasn’t had the ideal career launch for a second-overall draft choice. But Ball has become a 37.8 percent shooter from deep, which was hard to imagine. He has also reduced his turnovers to two per game, and he is averaging 13.7 points for the Pelicans. He is 23.
Julius Randle? Life is good. For the improving New York Knicks, Randle is playing 36.6 minutes per game and has career highs of 22.4 points and 11.1 rebounds. Only four other players are doing that: Joel Embiid, Giannis Antetokounmpo, Nikola Jokic and Nikola Vucevic. He is 26.
Josh Hart? He’s holding up his end as part of the JambaLakers. With New Orleans, Hart is averaging 7.8 rebounds in 27.8 minutes, which isn’t bad for a guard, and he’s contributing 6.8 points per game. He is 25.
D’Angelo Russell? He’s shivering, but things could be worse. Although he’s pumping in 3-pointers at a 39.9 percent clip for Minnesota, he is on pace to score fewer than 20 points per game for the first time in three seasons. The Lakers traded him, along with salary cap-eating Timofey Mozgov, to the Brooklyn Nets for the draft pick that became Kyle Kuzma. The Lakers used their second overall pick on Russell in 2015, amid anguished cries that Mitch Kupchak had passed up a chance to get future star … Jahlil Okafor. Russell is a week from turning 25.
These were the sacrificial Lakers, the ones who had to fill up the minutes and the box scores and the 82 games to nowhere.
They won 136 games in five seasons. They played underneath those glowering banners, struggled with nightly mismatches, and suspected, correctly, that they were just placeholders for the next guy to step from the limousine.
But they developed. Eventually, they developed the value that was able to both attract and clear room for LeBron James and then bring Anthony Davis to join him.
That’s how high the top shelf is. The Lakers could vaporize their roster to get Davis. While the kids went elsewhere to apply their boot-camp lessons, James and Davis won the championship last fall.
And be clear about this: Such a championship is worth whatever you must do to grab it.
But the kids shouldn’t be forgotten. They were good enough to meet the price stipulated by New Orleans general manager David Griffin.
You thought about that deal when you saw the pain and fear on Davis’ face in Denver on Sunday night. He tried to drive past Jokic and then lurched off the court. On Monday the Lakers said Davis had not done serious damage to a problematic Achilles tendon, and that he would be re-evaluated when they got back to Los Angeles.
To lose Davis for a serious amount of time would be like wrecking the new bike after you saved three years of lunch money. Although the Lakers seem to find useful guys like Alex Caruso and Talen Horton-Tucker, they left themselves no Plan B when they got Davis.
Remember James’ first L.A. season? The Lakers were 21-14 on Dec. 25 after they throttled the Warriors by 26 points. But they also lost James to a groin injury. He missed the next 17 games and they lost five of their next six and were under .500 by Feb. 12. By then Davis was growing larger in their windshield, and the young Lakers figured they were short-timers, with James’ approval. James played in 55 games and they finished 37-45.
Ingram, Ball and Hart went to the Pelicans along with three first-round draft choices, and New Orleans holds the rights to swap first-rounders with the Lakers in 2023. The first of those first-rounders was the No. 4 pick in 2019, which the Pelicans sent to Atlanta. It became De’Andre Hunter, who is averaging 17.2 points and shooting 51.8 percent. He could have been a Laker, too.
Maybe the salaries and the impact of the NBA’s royals make it impossible to win now and later. Build, tear down, rebuild, repeat.
If Davis is healthy, the Lakers are still more likely to win four playoff series than anyone else. If he goes down, Lakers fans can put the 2020 title run on a continuous loop, and try not to think about all that gold, cast away.
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