5. Nick Young
When the Lakers were a bad team without aspirations and not attractive to be watched, there was him.
Nick Young was the one who made the Los Angeles Lakers an entertaining team when things were not good. His style and personality attracted fans every night to Staple Center, knowing that they would attend a Swaggy P show, regardless of whether they won or lost.
And not just that. In his first year in a Lakers uniform, he had a career season under coach Mike D’Antoni, averaging 17.9 as the leading scorer and sixth man. D’Antoni’s fast-paced brand of basketball with high-volume 3-point shooting perfectly suited Young’s skills and style. A player with an easy trigger like him was always happy to fire whenever he got the ball on the arc.
That year, the Lakers missed the playoffs but it was their best season until they would expand the young core under Luke Walton.
After two bad years under coach Byron Scott, where he increasingly lost minutes because of Scott’s lack of appreciation of his game, he also managed to rebound and earn the starting shooting guard spot with Walton thanks to a great shooting and new defensive effort.
In a span of time, the Lakers were without an All-Star, Young was that star they were missing, at least off the floor, giving glamour, style and drama to the Hollywood team.