C's bet on Kyrie being the draw for Davis to be open to coming here. That bet failed for a lot of reasons. Some Ainge could have mitigated or dealt with, but most of them were baked in. (Gordon's injury the biggest, Kyrie being a weirdo loner the other)
The Lakers bet they could get a big time FA by virtue of long term courtships behind the scenes and their market. Clearly that succeed with LBJ and then he brought in Davis.
The built in advantages for LA are very real and they leveraged them well, even as they crapped all over themselves on the basketball side for the most part.