Lakers newsletter: Max Christie considers his future, not his present

Hey, everyone, and welcome to the latest edition of the Lakers newsletter, I’m Dan Woike, this time coming to you from the press room in Houston where the Lakers just moved to two games over .500 for the first time this year.

While Broderick Turner and I are writing about the present and the playoff future on a daily basis in the L.A. Times, I wanted to take a quick diversion to look at something really big picture today.

Max drama

When the NBA released the Lakers schedule, rookie Max Christie’s eyes darted down the list to try to find the team’s one trip to Chicago in late March.

After starring in high school just outside of the city in the northwest suburbs, the chance to be in NBA uniform just two years after playing high school games at Rolling Meadows High was a literal dream come true.

But as the Lakers got to planning for their last trip of the season, a dilemma presented itself for the 20-year-old rookie.

Should he go with the team and probably sit on the bench or should he stay in California and play with the Lakers’ G-League team as it entered the playoffs.

“At first, I wanted to be in Chicago,” he told The Times on Friday. “That was my initial reaction to seeing that it was either the playoff game or be in Chicago.”

That decision would’ve been best for Christie, the person. But this year? It’s been about Christie, the basketball player.

“After I slept on it and stepped back a little bit, like the best thing for my development in that situation was to play in that G-League game,” Christie said. “It was a playoff atmosphere and it was going to be a great game. ...I wanted to be a part of that game. And I definitely think it helped me just being a part of that game, being in those tight game situations. I don’t regret staying back and playing.”

Decisions like that one, which underscores the maturity and focus the Lakers rookie has used this season to impress his older teammates, is just one of the reasons why he’s helped shift projections for his professional future.

Teammates and rival scouts don’t need to squint to envision Christie as a starting guard, a player with more than enough athleticism and toughness to defend the position while owning a sweet shooting stroke from three-point range.

Christie played in 17 games with the South Bay Lakers this season, 18 if you count the playoff game they lost last week. He averaged 14.5 points on 44.1% shooting and 36.4% shooting from three. With the Lakers this season, he appeared in 38 games, where he has made 41.9% from three and looked like a credible defender against top-tier guards such as Bradley Beal.

But with minutes hard to come by, the time in the G-League became vital, Christie said.

“It was super valuable for sure,” he said. “Being in situations down there that I might not be in up here, in terms of game-winning situations where sometimes I converted and sometimes I didn’t. But having those experiences where I had the ball in my hands at the end of a game. Or just throughout the game in general, I could just develop on the things I’m watching as I’m on the bench with the Lakers, seeing the tricks everyone in here is using, the ones teams are using against us, coverages, and then applying that to the G League.

“It was definitely important to me.”

Christie said physically and mentally, his first year in the league went well. He avoided the “rookie wall” — “Maybe I haven’t played enough games to meet that criteria,” he wondered — and has now gone back to his pre- and postgame workout routines with the Lakers as the team pushes for the postseason.

“Hopefully in the years to come, I’ll have plenty of games in Chicago,” Christie said.

That seems like a pretty safe bet.

Song of the week

“Together in Electric Dreams” by Giorgio Moroder and Phillip Oakey

Hey, who knows what’s going to happen to Twitter? It’s one of the ways I’ve been able to directly communicate to fans (and the occasional hater). But with checkmarks maybe coming and going and a deluge of unreliable information potentially flooding in, how can you be sure you’re really hearing from me?

Well, this newsletter is the closest to an electric dream come true that I can offer.

I love this song — a collaboration between Moroder, an electronic music pioneer, and Human League frontman Oakey. It’s from the soundtrack to a movie called “Electric Dreams,” which sounds CRAZY.