The Los Angeles Lakers amassed a solid young roster during the 2010s. In the years after their last championship win with Kobe Bryant, the Lakers drafted future stars in the league like D’Angelo Russell, Julius Randle, Brandon Ingram, and Lonzo Ball.
In the years after Kobe’s retirement, the Lakers decided to focus on their youth and wanted to rebuild from the draft. These young players showed a lot of promise and were supposed to be the future for the Los Angeles Lakers.
But those plans changed when LeBron James decided to leave the Cleveland Cavaliers and sign with the Los Angeles Lakers. LeBron came to LA in order to further his interests in Hollywood, but he was still playing at a very high level.
The Lakers realized that they needed to capitalize on LeBron’s championship window. When James arrived, Julius Randle left the Lakers after the franchise didn’t offer him a new deal.
After one season, the Lakers traded Lonzo Ball and Brandon Ingram to the New Orleans Pelicans in order to bring in All-Star Anthony Davis. The only player that remained with the Lakers from that young core was Kyle Kuzma, who helped the Lakers win the 2020 NBA championship.
But Kuzma left this last offseason after the Lakers traded him to the Washington Wizards. But apparently, he was all set to move to the Kings before the Russell Westbrook deal was on the table. Regardless, all 4 players between Ingram, Randle, Ball, and Kuzma were touted as young players with high potential.
But fans were wrong about which one of them would be most successful. In a poll conducted during the 2017-18 NBA season, fans asked which of these players would have the most All-Star nominations.
Kyle Kuzma led the poll with 48%, followed by Lonzo Ball with 40%. Julius Randle had 8% of the votes, whereas Brandon Ingram had only 4% of the votes from the fans. And as we know now, the fans were very wrong about that.
Ingram was the first to become an All-Star in the group, attaining the honor in 2019. And last season, Julius Randle became an All-Star for the first time in his career. Lonzo Ball is expected to improve greatly and become an All-Star this season. As for Kuzma, his game has actually regressed since the poll was conducted.
Obviously, all these players are very young. And we won’t know whether the poll was right or wrong until the end of their career when we see how many All-Star nominations each player amassed in their career.
