Los Angeles Lakers: Comparing their young core to the rest of the NBA

Let’s see how the Los Angeles Lakers young core of Lonzo Ball, Brandon Ingram, and Kyle Kuzma compare to the other top young groups in the NBA.

Here’s the rules:

• I’ll rank the five teams with the best young core of three players.
• In order to be considered “young” a player must be 24-years-old or younger.
• This is not an individual ranking, this is a group ranking, so in order for a team to make this list they must have three good young players, not just one good young player.

In order to make this ranking fair and accurate I’m going to use six different metrics. First I’ll show the groups combined per game traditional stats such as: points, rebounds, assists, blocks, and steals. I’ll use www.nba.com’s Offensive Rating and Defensive Rating to illustrate each individual players offensive and defensive influence for the season.

I’ll also use www.basketball-reference.com’s Box Plus/Minus to show how each player has impacted their team when they’ve been on the court. Finally, I’ll rank each player on a scale of 1-10 to determine how likely it is that they become an All-Star and how likely it is that they become a super-star (top 15 player in the NBA).

Honorable Mentions:

• Sacramento Kings: De’Aaron Fox is a stud, but he’s the only player on the Kings who’s under 24-years-old and performing well.
• Minnesota Timberwolves: Karl-Anthony Towns is already an All-Star and he’s on his way to becoming a superstar, but he’s the only good young players on the Wolves (I know Andrew Wiggins is also 23-years-old, but he has an attitude problem, he’s lazy, and he doesn’t produce well on the court).
• Indiana Pacers: Myles Turner and Domantas Sabonis are good young players, but the Pacers don’t have another young player in their regular rotation.
• Brooklyn Nets: D’Angelo Russell, Caris LeVert, and Jarrett Allen form a good young core and I was torn between putting them on the list at #5 or leaving them off. After careful consideration I couldn’t put them above my 5th rated young core.