^ I’d say they would do it to try and win a championship with a couple of the best basketball players in the world.
Skinny Luka put up 39/8/8 today on 8/20 shooting and 19/20 from the free throw line. Looks like he might be in good shape and moving well from those free throw attempts.
but will the lakers willing to add players to complement luka, because if only luka will score and no one will step up, then its still not enough but hoping they will make it to the finals, if they have enough supporting cast to support the starts, since okc, nuggets, rockets gsw, it still a loaded west and an easy east, who will match the east in the finals, will one of the team in the west like celtics, came up on top?
Finding scoring is not that hard actually, you don't have to trade for superstars to get scoring. What you need is a solid core and especially defense if you want to win another ring. I mean we have all seen that creating superteams doesn't necessarily mean success, this fails over and over. again, even for the Lakers in the past with Dwight Howard, Steve Nash and so on. Especially super teams with aging stars and a very limited window isn't the right approach, that's why I also don't think splitting up and young and hungry core like in Houston is not the way to go!
It's also the chemistry of the players in a certain team, just like what you mentioned, it looks good in paper but in reality the players might have different mindset and they are not in the same page. But if players are hungry, like the Celtics, with Pierce, Allen, KG and Rondo it was a instant click and they become champions.
Another bad example is the KD, Irving and Harden in the Nets, too much drama and then they don't have enough supporting cast. I think this is one important aspects as well, players that are willing to do the hard job, and we've seen teams to have this special kinds of players as second stringers to play defense.