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The 'Swagtime' Lakers will be terribly entertaining

Sean Highkin  |  USA TODAY Sports

As part of USA TODAY Sports' NBA season preview coverage, Adi Joseph and I recently finished ranking all 30 teams by "watchability." The Los Angeles Lakers came in at No. 24, the reasoning being that Kobe Bryant's return date is still unknown, and after losing Dwight Howard, they simply weren't going to be very good. Not good enough to merit 29 nationally televised games, anyway.

After two preseason games, it's evident that we made a big mistake.

To be clear, the Lakers aren't going to win more than 35 games or so, and will probably miss the playoffs, unless Kobe somehow plays on opening night and hasn't lost a step. But Lakers fans are going to have a lot more fun watching this team than they did last year's.

The main reason: Nick Young.

The Lakers signed "Swaggy P" to a two-year minimum contract over the summer, hoping he could provide some scoring help for a roster that struggled in a big way to put points on the board when Kobe went down. But he's going to give them so much more than that.

With Young as the Lakers' No. 1 option, a new era is born for the purple and gold. Kareem, Magic and James Worthy were the "Showtime" Lakers. The Bryant-led teams that won five championships under Phil Jackson were the "Lake Show." Now, Young is ushering in "Swagtime." And it may be the most glorious period yet in Lakers history.

This is the team Young has been meant to play for his whole career. In five seasons in the NBA, he's bounced from the Washington Wizards to the Los Angeles Clippers to the Philadelphia 76ers, never really finding his footing. Now, as a Laker, he has found his true calling. "Kobe substitute" is his destiny.

"I grew up a Laker fan," Young told the Los Angeles Times in August. "Kobe, Shaq, Nick Van Exel, Eddie Jones — now I'm playing in that purple and gold."

Even more exciting is Lakers head coach Mike D'Antoni's plan for handling Young, who likes to shoot and not much else, from Mark G. Medina of the Los Angeles Daily News:

"He's going to have leeway," D'Antoni said of Young. "That's what he does. He scores. If you don't give him leeway, you shouldn't play him. When he's on the floor, you have to respect his talent. He's coachable and wants to play the right way. He will. But he's one of those guys when he gets on a roll, he puts up a lot of points. You ride him when he does and try to watch him when he doesn't. But Nick is going to score a lot of points for us."

Swaggy P with leeway to shoot as much as he wants is music to the ears of basketball fans everywhere. It's a wonder it took this long for him to become a Laker. It's just too logical.

Following the 2012-13 Lakers was a depressing experience for fans and non-fans alike. After pulling off a coup by trading for Steve Nash and Dwight Howard without really giving anything up, they were expected to be frontrunners to unseat the Miami Heat as NBA champions. But after a slow start, head coach Mike Brown was fired five games into the season and replaced with D'Antoni. Things didn't get much better after that. Howard , coming off back surgery, never really looked like himself. Nash and Pau Gasol were hurt for much of the year. The team struggled to adapt to D'Antoni's offense. Then Kobe went down in April.

Even Lakers haters grew tired of the trainwreck, because even after it became clear that this team was not a title contender, they were still plastered all over every national media outlet on sheer strength of market. If you moved the Charlotte Bobcats to Los Angeles and gave them the level of coverage the Lakers got, there wouldn't have been much difference in quality of basketball.

This year, there are no expectations. Even the most optimistic fan knows the playoffs are unlikely given Kobe's health and the loaded Western Conference. A losing record won't be covered like a national crisis, because it will be entirely expected. Instead of constant clamoring to bring back Phil Jackson, there will be lots of Nick Young isolation jumpers.

Swaggy P isn't the hero Los Angeles wants, but he's the hero they deserve.

It's time to embrace Swagtime.

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