Honestly what are the Lakers doing, don't they remember 2012? Carmelo and Russ suck as role players and their entire core is over 30 other than AD, at least one of them is bound to get hurt.
Carmelo the last two years has been a good role player.
Outside of LeBron and AD, I don't think any of the Laker players qualify as core players. Gasol and Dwight Howard are only meant to soak up minutes until AD moves to the 5 in the 4th quarter. Ariza and Bazemore are only meant to take over KCP's role of wing defender and trying to knock down open threes. The actual young players (Talen Horton-Tucker, Malik Monk and Kendrick Nunn) are meant to take over the roles previously played by Kyle Kuzma and Alex Caruso. To be honest, none of those are significant downgrades from the team that won the Finals in 2020.
The big questions are what happens when AD or LeBron get hurt, and do the Lakers have anyone who can spark the offense when LeBron is on the bench? I think that is why they wanted Westbrook. Having him on the team did not bother the offensive output for Paul George in his year in OKC, Harden in Houston, or Bradley Beal in Washington. So if either LeBron or AD is out, pairing the other with Westbrook gives them a much better chance. Additionally, with Westbrook the Lakers offense should not die whenever LeBron goes to the bench like it did this past year.
So LeBron + RUSS, LeBron + AD, and RUSS + AD should all work well. But, to me, the limitation is that the ceiling for all three playing at the same time is not nearly as high as for other teams. To me.