Let’s review the State of the Los Angeles Lakers at the end of the 2011-12 season:

An old, slow team, with no No. 1 draft pick, a shallow bench and all sorts of money tied up in a handful of guys. Their star, Kobe Bryant, would turn 34 before the coming season, their power forward, Pau Gasol, was about to turn 32 and was coming off probably the worst season of his NBA career. Their one breakout star, Andrew Bynum, had a shaky attitude, a low basketball IQ and an alarming injury history.

This team had just gone down to Oklahoma City in five games in the second round of the playoffs, and looked unlikely to compete evenly with OKC or Miami for the foreseeable future.

Things seemed dire in that “diminishing returns” way. Their only way forward seemed to be to trade Gasol or Bynum for Dwight Howard — or for lots of pieces or draft picks with an eye to blowing up the team and starting over, hoping they would be relevant again before Kobe dissolved into a furious and sad nothingness.

Instead, the Lakers are keeping their core of three, and will add  Steve Nash, and they plan to win asap, not three years from now.

I like this deal. Like it a lot.

Let me count the ways.

–I like that this apparently was Steve Nash’s preferred destination. And that Kobe apparently helped recruit him.

–Nash should extend Kobe’s career and make him more efficient, too. Instead of feeling compelled to create a shot, from the perimeter, often while double-teamed, Kobe can float at the arc or dash to the hole and Nash will get him the ball where he can score without all the pump fakes and pivots. And his shooting percentage ought to be better than 43.

–Nash is a master of the pick-and-roll, and that should benefit Gasol, especially, and get him back into the offense. Even Mike Brown, not a great coach, ought to be able to figure this out. (Basically, turn over the operations of the team to Nash.)

–The Lakers have a real point guard for the first time since … Nick Van Exel? Magic Johnson? Most teams find it advantageous to have a really good “1”. The Lakers have been doing without for a decade. They ought to like it.

–I like that ownership is just saying, “Screw the salary cap; we’ll pay the tax.” Lakers fans deserve that. They don’t mind paying a lot of money to see their team; just give them a group with a chance.

–They could win another ring, and soon. It’s not the way to bet (unless you get really good odds), but it could happen. The club they had the day before the Fourth of July … that team absolutely was not going to win anything. It was headed into the nether world of “not good enough to win, not bad enough to get a great player in the draft.”

Yes, some down sides.

Nash is 38. He is managing his decline phase quite well, but 38 is 38. That’s old in the NBA … even for a player whose game does not depend on sheer athleticism.

Nash can’t really guard anyone. There’s that. But the Lakers should be used to that; Derek Fisher couldn’t guard anyone, either.

The Lakers tried this “round up the old guys” thing once before, in 2003-04, and it didn’t end with a championship, as it was supposed to. Now, that team was not as shaky as memory makes it — they did get to the Finals, after all. But that was a group that never really quite meshed, and if you aren’t at least a little worried about how Kobe and Nash will work together, which means Kobe giving up the ball a lot, you’re not paying attention.

Still, I like that they did something. For winning now. For making their offense more efficient. The draft picks … the 1 and 2 next year, the 2 in 2014, the 1 in 2015 … well, so be it.  The Lakers plan to be good enough that those will all be late/high picks, and it won’t kill them.

I also like that they pulled this off with very little speculation. Most everyone had Nash going to Toronto or New York. What a pleasant surprise.

The key is the core group of four remaining healthy for a couple of years. They will contend, which most of us thought was not going to happen again any time soon.