Column: Things might be looking up for Lakers, but it will be a long climb

Lakers guard Lonzo Ball blocks the shot of Clippers center DeAndre Jordan during second half Thursday.

Oct. 19, 2017 11:25 PM PT

This wasn’t how the Lakers had hoped to launch their new season and resume their long climb back toward respectability, not the way they hoped to welcome Lonzo Ball to the NBA.

After too many interminable and abominable marches toward the draft lottery, the Lakers have incentive to win again, and not only because they traded away their 2018 first-round draft pick. They are finally inching forward and have the pieces to make things interesting, even if returning to the playoffs is too much to ask yet.

That overall sense of hope generated an expectant buzz at Staples Center on Thursday night. “It’s a new era,” Lakers reserve forward Kyle Kuzma said before the game, but it was the same old result in the end. The Clippers beat the Lakers 108-92 in the opener for both teams, and disappointed fans let loose some boos from seats that rapidly emptied in the fourth quarter.

“I wasn’t happy with what we gave our fans tonight,” coach Luke Walton said. “The crowd was ready to get going and we had a couple of runs where they got loud, but we couldn’t maintain it because we weren’t making shots.”

His youthful players allowed their poor shooting to hurt their energy and other areas of their game, he said. That’s a product of inexperience. “It’s a good learning opportunity for us as a team,” Walton said.

Ball, the cornerstone of the Lakers’ future, was a nervous zero-for-three before he made a three-pointer in the second quarter. He jawed back and forth with Clippers guard Patrick Beverley, not intimidated and appearing comfortable as the center of attention. He will have to get used to that, and to facing bigger, quicker opponents than he did in his one season at UCLA.

It wasn’t a dream debut for him, with three points on one-for-six shooting, nine rebounds and four assists, but Walton insisted Ball might have had twice as many assists, or more, if his teammates had shot better than 40.7%. “Overall, it was a decent game for him,” Walton said.

The key is to get past decent to dynamic and good.

Magic Johnson, who’s starting his first full season as president of basketball operations after taking the job in February, said he can sense fans’ belief that the Lakers are, at long last, on an upswing.

“It’s good because we’ve been down for a long time here, and so you’ve got to take steps. We’ve taken a step and that’s what we want,” he said before the game. “The fans want to see that you’re improving. That’s what they want to see.

“So just hopefully this is all going to come together, and everybody can stay healthy and that we can get more wins than we got last season and that everybody can get better. Because you can’t grow unless everybody gets better. That’s what we’re hoping for, that the guys can play to their potential and we can get some wins behind that.”

There’s a lot of work to be done for the Lakers, who allowed the Clippers to begin their own new era — without Chris Paul — with a combined 54 points and 41 rebounds from the starting front line of Danilo Gallinari, Blake Griffin and DeAndre Jordan. That frontcourt should get them a lot of wins.

The Lakers, 26-56 last season, have their own concerns. But after so much waiting, they firmly believe they’re moving forward.

“It’s already been fun. You could see that in exhibitions when crowds came out, the plays that we’ve had,” Johnson said before the game. “It’s a different feeling to the team already, to the building. The fans can feel it.”

Johnson’s attention was split before the game between the Lakers’ warmups and the rampaging Dodgers, who finished off the Chicago Cubs in the National League Championship Series to reach the World Series for the first time since 1988. He wanted to be here to see Ball’s first game, but as a co-owner of the Dodgers his heart was in Chicago too. “One thing about L.A., if you win, they embrace you,” Johnson said. “That’s what it’s about.”

The Lakers used to know that feeling. They will know it again someday, but not for a while.

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Lakers forward Luol Deng grabs the jersey of Clippers guard Milos Teodosic’s while being screened by DeAndre Jordan during second half.