Off the court, the ever-roiling internecine drama of the Buss family has begun to give way to investment-firm billionaire Mark Walters’ efforts to turn forum blue and gold into something a little more blue and white. On it, the franchise continues its transition from an era revolving around LeBron James — one of the greatest players in the history of the sport and the driving force behind the Lakers’ most recent NBA championship, and also the central figure in what’s been, all things considered, a fairly tumultuous eight years — to another revolving around handpicked standard-bearer Luka Dončić (and, potentially, Austin Reaves).

It’s been a somewhat fitful shift, as the organization and its signature stars have sought to manage what James’ longtime agent Rich Paul famously called “the difficulty in winning now while preparing for the future.”

When James missed the first 14 games of the season dealing with a sciatica issue, the Lakers went 10-4, with Dončić quickly establishing himself as an MVP candidate and Reaves making it clear that he was ticketed for a bigger role and a bigger payday in the not-too-distant future. The winning continued once James returned: L.A. went 13-7 in the first 20 games following his season debut, with LeBron continuing to hold Father Time at arm’s length, averaging nearly 22 points and seven assists per game on 51% shooting as he blew past his 41st birthday into the new year.

But while the overall record and individual statistics looked great, the fundamentals of how the team operated left much to be desired. An underwhelming .500 stretch heading into the All-Star break featured blowouts by the Spurs, Cavaliers and Hornets, double-digit defeats at the hands of the Knicks, Kings and Trail Blazers, and a loss to the defending champion Thunder after which James made plain what he was as the difference between L.A. and OKC: “That’s a championship team right there. We’re not. We can’t sustain energy and effort for 48 minutes, and they can.”

A rotation light on point-of-attack stoppers, wing defenders with both size and speed, and dependable rim protection consistently struggled to prevent opponents from getting downhill into the paint, generating corner 3s, or taking and making shots at the basket. (As erstwhile Celtic turned L.A. X-factor Marcus Smart succinctly put it in late December, “We doing s***. We're being real s***ty right now.”) This led to renewed rounds of questions about whether it’s possible for the Lakers to build a championship-caliber defense, both right now and in the future, and concerns over whether their offensive infrastructure is sound enough to withstand the kind of tests they’ll face in a playoff series.

Said questions and concerns could have propelled Lakers brass to take an aggressive tack toward hunting for help on the trade market. Instead, they made a comparatively minor move, trading Gabe Vincent and a second-round pick to Atlanta in exchange for veteran sharpshooter Luke Kennard. While Kennard has played well and shot the cover off the ball since arriving, perhaps his most attractive trait from Rob Pelinka and Co.’s perspective is that his $11 million salary comes off the books after this season — in keeping with the Lakers’ reported preference to keep non-Dončić (and, presumably Reaves) money off their books beyond the end of next season and “preserve cap space for 2027, when the team expects to have space to sign a max-salary free agent.” (Again: a tale of two teams.)

While the bulk of that up-and-down pre-All-Star-break stretch came with Reaves sidelined by a calf strain, even when head coach JJ Redick has had his full big three available, chemistry has remained difficult to come by.

While the Lakers have scored at elite levels whenever Dončić, James or Reaves have run the show solo with the other two on the bench, according to PBP Stats, they rank a comparatively underwhelming 10th in points scored per possession for the season — due partly to managing to score like a bottom-10 offense in Dončić/James/Reaves minutes. As prodigious as their respective offensive gifts clearly are, the Lakers’ top trio has too infrequently deployed them in service of elevating one another.

“The bigger challenge is when they’re all on the court together,” Redick told reporters last week. “Because they all want the basketball, and the reality … people have to sacrifice.”

As we discussed on a recent episode of The Big Number, and as my podcast partner Tom Haberstroh recently teased out on The Finder, the most successful iterations of the Lakers to date feature Dončić and Reaves playing without James (minutes in which they’ve outscored opponents by 10.4 points per 100 possessions) or James playing without Dončić and Reaves (plus-7.5 points-per-100) in lineups that have frequently featured more complementary, lower-usage and (sometimes) defensively superior options like Smart, Rui Hachimura, Jake LaRavia, Jarred Vanderbilt and Jaxson Hayes.

Maybe Redick looks to more aggressively stagger his big three coming down the home stretch, with an eye toward surrounding Dončić and Reaves with more shooting and flanking James with bigger, stouter defenders. Maybe he sees more value in going the other way — trying to get them more reps together (they’ve played just 879 minutes across 44 outings going back to last season) in hopes of finding the synergy that could serve as a rising tide to lift all boats.

Or maybe — with the Lakers coming off arguably their best win of the season, with a chance to rise back into third place in the West by knocking off the Wolves on Tuesday, sitting in strong tiebreaker position with most of the teams with whom they’re jostling for position in the middle of the Western pack and with a shot at securing a top-four seed still alive — Redick thinks his squad is becoming a little more Team A than Team B at the right time of year.

“My job is not to overreact,” Redick told reporters after the win over the Knicks. “We’re 15-9 in our last 24 [games]. We’re top-10 offense and top-15 defense [in that span] — that’s what we wanted to be coming into the season with this group, and that’s where our group is right now.”

If they can stay there — if the recent shift toward heavier doses of zone defense has the intended effect, if Dončić continues to dominate at an All-NBA First Team level, and if he, James and Reaves can find that elusive chemistry — the Lakers could have a chance to make some real postseason noise. If they can’t, though — if the final month brings more of the same inconsistent execution and defensive work — then a team that never quite figured itself out might find itself getting another early start on what could wind up being a transformative summer.