LOS ANGELES — In the first month of his Lakers tenure, just before he hit a winning lottery ticket, Coach Frank Vogel still felt pretty good about the roster he was inheriting.
With Brandon Ingram, Lonzo Ball and Josh Hart, the Lakers wouldn’t have been as good as they were last season with Anthony Davis. But Vogel definitely thought they could be good.
“My mindset at that point was that we have a lot of talent around LeBron James,” Vogel said. “We’re going to be a team-first team and those young guys are going to really learn discipline, in particular on the defensive end and we were going to continue to grow their offensive games, similarly to what they’ve done. … So I was very optimistic about what we could be, even without that trade.”
That silver lining painting of the package that the Lakers eventually traded to New Orleans has borne out well, especially…
