National Basketball Association

The Lakers are finally embracing modern basketball

Published Jun. 24, 2016 7:33 p.m. ET

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EL SEGUNDO, Calif. —€” The Los Angeles Lakers have lived in the past for far too long.

Since the Lakers' last championship in 2010, basketball has undergone an evolution, where pace, space and 3-point shooting are the pillars of modern success. The Lakers have been slow to embrace the movement, choosing to instead double-down on Kobe Bryant and his archaic skill set, which seemingly belonged in a distant era, as the rest of the NBA passed them by.

Some examples: Last season, the franchise essentially punted a developmental year for their young, promising core to commemorate Bryant's 20th and final season. The Lakers' pitch to star free agents in recent offseasons has been some mix of Look at our brand and Count the rings. And as analytics shifted to the forefront of NBA analysis, the organization remained skeptical, until caving recently.

This offseason, though, there appears to a palpable shift in the Lakers' approach.

The first step was hiring former Laker and Golden State Warriors assistant coach Luke Walton. While still an ode to the franchise's glory days, Walton's hiring suggests the Lakers are looking to adopt the tenets of modern basketball, which is considerable progress from the tumultuous reign of Byron Scott.

Walton is an unknown commodity, to be sure. His 39-4 stint this season as an interim coach with the Warriors was certainly impressive, but it's difficult to glean much from such a small sample size. He could end up being a mediocre (or worse) coach.

Yet as a Steve Kerr disciple, Walton clearly values 3-point shooting, ball movement, spacing and versatility defensively. As he said in his introductory press conference on Tuesday, joy, individuality and accountablity are the keys to a team's success, which is in stark contrast to most of what Scott preached the past two seasons.

Of course, off-court theory doesn't always translate to on-court success. But again, this is progress. The Lakers' last three coaching hires were Mike Brown, Mike D'Antoni and Scott. Walton is a nice divergence from the pack. We don't know much about him, and that's probably a good thing.

It's difficult for a chef to prevail without the right ingredients, and as such, the selection of Duke product Brandon Ingram with the No. 2 overall pick is even more important than the Walton hiring. Ingram was the obvious choice to many, but in the days of yore, the Lakers might have selected Kris Dunn or Buddy Hield -- known commodities with tangible experience and skill sets -- to satisfy a rabid fan base dying for wins and relevance.

Instead, the Lakers drafted a 6-foot-10 freshman forward who physically embodies the shift in modern basketball. Ingram projects as a traditional small forward with the length and flexibility to play both power forward and shooting guard, and that positionless value is immeasurable in the modern era. If he can pack on some muscle and maintain his athleticism, Ingram might even be able to effectively function as a center in some small-ball lineups, as Kevin Durant has done with the Oklahoma City Thunder.

To hold Ingram to Durant's standard is unfair, as Lakers general manager Mitch Kupchak pointed out after drafting him. But it provides the blueprint for how Ingram can be deployed, even if it's in a less effective way. If D'Angelo Russell isn't the Lakers' franchise player, Ingram very well could -- and should -- be.

With their second draft pick, the No. 32 overall selection, the Lakers selected Croatian center Ivica Zubac, who was projected to go in the mid-to-late first round. Zubac has drawn comparisons to Marc Gasol -- the Memphis Grizzlies' All-Star behemoth and the Lakers' former second-round pick -- and could be the steal of the draft.

Zubac might not be on the roster this upcoming season -- he and Kupchak each expressed optimism the two sides could get a deal done -- given his inexperience and contract situation, but if and/or when he comes over and plays, he'll become only the second foreign-born player taken by the Lakers since the 2005 draft to make the rotation (the other being Robert Sacre, who is Canadian).

The Lakers have enjoyed success with international players (most notably Pau Gasol) in recent years, but it hasn't traditionally been a strength of theirs in the draft.

As Kupchak pointed out, language barriers, complex contract negotiations with foreign teams and leagues, and the vast differences in the rules and style of play between foreign leagues and the NBA sometimes make it easier to just draft an American player, especially in the second round, where most players won't ever make a NBA roster, anyway.

International prospects, in particular, are often harder to scout and gauge and project, and based on their recent draft history, it doesn't seem like the Lakers have had much interest in that process. Yet the Lakers took a chance and gambled on the Croatian prospect, and at the very least have a decent chance of walking away with a solid backup center.

Combine the additions of Walton, Ingram and Zubac with the Lakers' budding core -- Russell, Julius Randle, Jordan Clarkson and Larry Nance Jr. -- the Los Angeles market, the Lakers' brand value and $50-plus million in cap space, and the Lakers are suddenly a far more attractive destination than they were last summer or the year before.

That doesn't mean they're going to land a star this offseason -- they probably won't, which could be a blessing given the rather shallow 2016 free agent class -- or make the playoffs over the next couple of years, and that's fine. Rebuilding is a slow, often grueling process. The Lakers have been partly rebuilding since 2013, doing their best to skip the process altogether, and ultimately failing.

Now they're all in. Or so it seems.

None of the moves are necessarily uncharacteristic of the Lakers in a historical sense -- they've drafted young and international players with a lot of potential, and taken fliers on little-known coaches before. But the franchise's decision-making this offseason shows vast progress from their self-inflicted purgatory over the past few years, and signifies that the Lakers are belatedly making a philopsophical shift and embracing the modern era of basketball.

It's about damn time.

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