Long season they need to stay healthy. That has been their downfall is they can't stay on the court for long stretches of the season. If AD can stay healthy they will contend. Also need to trade for another piece. A deep threat wing or shooting guard to space the floor more would go a long way on that team.
I have this bad feeling that the Lakers will be nothing again when AD is injured. That should not be the case. They cannot be an AD-dependent team because they won't know what could happen.
Darvin Ham should try to bench him and experiment with some player combinations. Maybe in times of a back to back games.
There's one game where he didn't play but that's against the Spurs, one of the weakest teams in the league now and they only won by 5 points in a high-scoring game AD-less.
Right, by now we know what Davis can really bring to the Lakers, specially when he was in a rampage and the statistics that he has put in that 5 game stretch if I'm not mistaken. But they can't totally depend on him, because admit it or not, he is very fragile that a simple fail or just going to get the ball or even helping his team mates to stand up might result in pulled muscle or injuries.
So as a coach, Ham should experiment with different combination, sort of testing everything when Davis is on the bench.
To get a feel and see who works inside an who doesn't.