The wild thing is that NBA media dudes keep letting these Lakers fans trick them in following their narrative too. We’ve seen it with Lonzo, Caruso, and THT where solid role players get pushed into the “future star” class based entire on dudes with handles like Kobe4Ever69 stabbing them on social media.
Well, Lonzo at least had a legit reason for the hype. He had been pegged as a future star for forever, had dominated HS basketball, was one of the top (if not the #1?) recruits in the country, and had a great season at UCLA. He shot .412 from three on volume and TS%ed .673 on top of putting up 14.6/6.0/7.6 as a 6'6" PG. Obviously there were some concerns about his defense, but outside of his funky stroke (that worked), one game where Fox outclassed him in the Tournament, and one Fox spin move that nearly faked him out of his shoes (I think that was in the regular season UCLA/Kentucky game?) it's not like there were huge warts there.
Obviously things haven't gone as well as everybody hoped in the NBA, at least some of that due to continual injury, but I don't think he was in any way an unlikely candidate who was anointed the next star by a naive LA fanbase. Everything was lined up for him to be that star before he ever set foot on an NBA court, no matter what team had drafted him.