Posts

Aaaaaaaaand we’re back! The Lakers title defense kicked off its Foreward part of the season (aka as the NBA preseason this year) as Chapter 1 is yet to come. We didn’t see many of the players who were featured on the team when we won the NBA title a couple days ago or so. We did, however, see many (not all) of the new faces in what was an expectedly ragged affair. Style points weren’t many to come by and there won’t be any major rotation decisions made based off of what we saw. so the news that will likely make the most headlines is: The NBA is back!

1. The Good. Talen Horton-Tucker looked pretty good, he made nice plays both for himself and others. He looked solid on D as evidenced by his three steals. He had really a nifty finish over Zu in the 3rd. Not the most efficient showing, he played a tough game, though. He consistently found a way to slow the game down which is a huge developmental step for any young player. Trezz played as advertised. the dude almost had a double-double by the half and brought regular season energy in a preseason game. I loved his steal and finish on Serge in the first half. There were some nice defensive close outs for a preseason game. Wes Mathews had a super-efficient game. Biggest good? No serious injuries after we saw Wes hit the deck with a slight ankle tweak and Caruso slip and get some treatment on his hip.
2. The Bad. Schroder didn’t ‘wow’ and none of our ‘sure hope they improve as shooters!’ guys shot great. Fans of Kostas Antetokounmpo saw some nice flashes but will surely have wanted to see a little more, he did play well on defense. Kuzma had a mostly ‘Kyle…’ showing until the game was on the line when he found an open Quinn Cook for a three and canned a clutch triple of his own. You know, the regular preseason kind of thing.
3. The Ugly. The turnovers, so very many turnovers. With so little time between October 11th and the season kicking off there isn’t the luxury of a lengthy ‘getting acquainted on the court’ phase of the season and it showed tonight. Also the overall shooting was terrible, especially from three point land. Personally not sweating the Bad or the Ugly, for many reasons. Mainly: it’s preseason.
4. One odd thing: no rookies on the Lakers this year. There will be no hazing, no backpacks, everyone will carry their own luggage (or in the personal manner preferred) and the whole squad will have some amount of NBA service time logged, barring a trade.
5. From paper to reality. Since we didn’t see 4/5ths of the Lakers starting line up tonight (I’m assuming Schroder starts) it’s fair to say we still ain’t seen nothing yet. We got a win, nobody got hurt and some of the guys we’re hoping develop into something useful did pretty well. We’ll see if Sunday sees more players of impact see the floor for some time together.

For more exciting NBA news and Los Angeles Lakers info, introspection and insight check out NBA Draft Junkies and Lakers Fast Break!