With the commitment to winning the rest of the NBA is showing, having Kobe alone will not be enough. Duncan, Francis/Yao, KG and co., Carmelo and co., Peja, Bibby, Miller, Jackson and co. Dallas and co. (
), etc. etc. are all teams that are one-up on the Lakers.
The Lakers have not tried to develop any young guys, and by putting your entire payroll on TWO players, if you lose one of them you're half a team. So yeah, it will take a damn long time for the Lakers to compete again, but when they do, they will never have the "sure thing" they had with Shaq.