While You Weren’t Sleeping It would take a lot for Lakers fans to stop loving Magic. His recent actions are testing those limits. Marty Lederhandler/Associated Press Marc Stein Starting with a wild night in Chicago last Tuesday in one of the most suspenseful draft lotteries in league history, much has happened in the N.B.A. over the past week. Maybe too much. It seems wise, then, to recap and analyze some of the newsiest developments in that span amid the two overtime games we were just treated to in the conference finals. Some takeaways from all the movement in the lottery: The worst record in the league this season (17-65) couldn’t get the Knicks more than the No. 3 pick in the June 20 draft. The Los Angeles Lakers vaulted from a projected No. 11 to No. 4 — albeit in a draft most scouts say features, at best, three potential franchise players: Zion Williamson, Ja Morant and R.J. Barrett. And, most notably, New Orleans (from a projected No. 7) and Memphis (from a projected No. 8) rose to claim the No. 1 and No. 2 overall picks, respectively, which in turn shoved two 19-63 teams (Cleveland to No. 5 and Phoenix to No. 6) further down the board than anticipated. Rudy Gobert of the Utah Jazz reacted to all the lottery chaos with a tweet that clearly resonated with a lot of people. “We just witnessed the end of tanking,” Gobert wrote. “And we should be happy about it.” In the N.B.A., though, it’s never that simple. It’s premature to declare, based on one year of results, that the league’s decision to flatten the odds at the top of the lottery has fixed everything. League officials, to be fair, don’t believe that, either. Things worked out at the top, if you wish to describe it as such, because the top two picks fortuitously went to teams that aren’t in destination markets and that don’t have the pathways to elite talent that the Knicks or Lakers do. But it’s not going to work out that way every time. After what just happened to the Knicks, Cavaliers and Suns, it certainly is conceivable that the new lottery system — which gives teams with the three worst records a shared 14 percent shot at the No. 1 overall pick — will dissuade teams from trying to sink to the very bottom of the standings. Yet it’s also true that just being somewhere in the lottery may look as attractive as ever to losing teams given how much up-and-down movement those flattened odds appeared to spark — especially the middle of the lottery. Just look at the Pelicans. To cap a season of chaos stemming from Anthony Davis’s trade demand in January, they played without the injured Jrue Holiday for the last month of the season and down the stretch finally succeeded in their push to sit Davis to prevent their incumbent superstar from getting injured before they could resume efforts to trade him this off-season. The result: New Orleans went 3-13 in its final 16 games and, blessed now with the opportunity to draft Williamson, certainly benefited greatly from that late fade. Magic Johnson just plunged the Lakers into deeper chaos with his provocative “First Take” interview Monday morning. As farcical as the Lakers continue to be, with Magic upstaging the team’s introductory news conference for Frank Vogel, my views here haven’t changed. No matter how destructive and self-serving you find the timing of his latest disclosures to Stephen A. Smith, it’s Magic Johnson. He will be forgiven by Lakers fans for virtually any transgression because he’s the greatest player in team history — or, at worst, Magic shares that status with Kobe Bryant. Also: Magic could take a vow of silence going forward and it wouldn’t change the fundamental issues here. The Lakers, under their owner Jeanie Buss, are set up disastrously as an organization to dig themselves out of this mess. Worse yet, Buss continues to show little interest in changing the structure. Let me say it in print for at least the third time since Magic’s abrupt April 9 resignation: Buss’s desire to install Magic as president of basketball operations in the first place was an understandable (and defensible) attempt to restore the franchise to glory by reaching back to its Showtime past. She tried to do it the “Lakers way,” honoring the methodology she believed her father, Jerry Buss, would have employed, and she watched her faith in Magic implode in two short years. Fine. Now Buss gets a mulligan. But how many more lows do the Lakers have to sink to before she realizes it’s time to do something drastically different? The most sensible commentary from Magic in his TV appearance covered his frustrations with the many unqualified voices in Buss’s cabinet of advisers. He confirmed that, in addition to the under-fire General Manager Rob Pelinka, Buss takes considerable input from Kurt Rambis, the former Lakers player and coach, his wife Linda Rambis and Tim Harris, the team’s chief operating officer on the business side. As long as the Lakers persist with this structure, as opposed to hiring a proven front-office leader for everyone to fall behind, don’t be fooled into thinking that this once-proud franchise has hit rock bottom. Things can still get much, much worse in Lakerland. Just imagine where they’ll be if LeBron James gets disillusioned to the point that he tries to force his exit via trade. Where will the Lakers be then? At this point, Buss and Co. appear to be resting all their hopes on LeBron finding success in his efforts to recruit either Kyrie Irving or Kawhi Leonard in free agency this summer. It’s hard to see the Lakers getting anything done with a marquee name right now unless James and his agent Rich Paul can do it for them. Mystery surrounds Kevin Durant as the N.B.A. finals approach — on and off the court. It remains unclear when Kevin Durant and, for that matter, DeMarcus Cousins will be cleared to return to the Golden State lineup. All signs continue to point to Cousins being closer to clearance than Durant, but the Warriors’ final-four series with Portland went too fast to give either the chance to come back against the Trail Blazers. In Durant’s case, much of the uncertainty stems from the fact that the Warriors have not disclosed the severity of the calf strain he suffered in Game 5 of the Houston series. Although a nine-day break before the N.B.A. finals start presumably has to help both of them, Golden State’s initial optimism has cooled when it comes to Durant’s ability to make an expeditious recovery from what at first looked like a scary injury. As for the bigger-picture matter of Durant’s future: I am unafraid to announce, with no trace of hot-takery, that firm predictions about what Durant will do when free agency starts in 40 days are ill-advised. Within the last month, very smart and plugged-in people I have consulted say that the Los Angeles Clippers have emerged as an equally dangerous threat to the Knicks to sign Durant away from Golden State. And I believe it. Problem is, at various points during the season, I have heard trusted insiders state with conviction that Durant is already planning to join the Knicks … and then that he is likely to consider the Nets as well … and now that he is eyeing the Clippers just as intently as New York. It leads one to conclude that maybe the best forecast, at least for the moment, is that nobody but Durant and his business manager Rich Kleiman know.