The comparisons to the KG/Pierce trade are off for any number of reasons, but probably most importantly that the KG/Pierce outcome was itself a bizarre anomaly. It's usually not that hard to stay out of the cellar if you have no incentive to tank. It took sort of a perfect storm of a collapse by KG and Pierce, inept management and ownership, and even then a fair amount of bad luck for that trade to work out as it did.
Griffin did a great job here given he was effectively negotiating without any leverage, and this format now looks like the gold standard to me of superstar-trade-demand trades, but it's still a huge longshot to return top value to the Pelicans. LeBron will be gone by the the time the bulk of the picks arrive (and may already finished be as a top player), but in 2025, AD will still be five years younger than KG was when he was traded, and the Lakers mostly have a clean cap going forward. They may not be contenders, but it will take a series of catastrophic mistakes for them to end up picking at the top of the draft. A career debilitating injury to Davis wouldn't even be enough in all likelihood.
That said, I don't see much of a championship contender here. Perhaps the biggest misconception in the NBA is that only your top end guys matter. You can't win with just depth guys, but you pretty much can't win without them either.