5 THINGS

Scrubs vs. Starters was a perhaps unexpected plot twist to the preseason. LeBron and Russell rested for the sake of rest and AD missed time due to his balky back. After assuring the world that, were the games to matter, AD would play, coach Ham trotted out a who’s who of bench guys on this iteration of Laker basketball. For the most part they floundered against the superior starting line up that Minnesota deployed but still some players shined and it was good for all of them to get the kind of run they just won’t see in an NBA game.

1. My opinion to start Thomas Bryant remains unchanged. The dude plays hard, has a better skillset than Jones, and just looks hungrier. Touching the next level only to sustain a serious injury looks like it’s lit a fire under TB and he made the most of his extended run last night. While he missed his 2 three point FGAs (a theme shared by basically the whole squad) he was active on defense and aggressive in the paint even when he was going up against Gobert. His aggression and attack-mode earned him multiple trips to the stripe which helped us keep pace early in the game. Jones is probably the better shot blocker in terms of racking up the stat itself but Bryant is his equal on defense because of his superior nimbleness and mobility. I’m sure we’ll get another look at Jones as starter and perhaps he’ll come back with something better. If the choice were up to me and I had to make it today, Bryant would get the nod.
2. Lakers offensive rebounding was great! Unfortunately it was a byproduct of a slew of missed shots in the 2nd and 3rd quarters. Threes or twos, didn’t matter, Laker youngins missed a grip of shots of all shapes and sizes. Again, is this a three alarm bell for the season? Not really, but it does spotlight an issue we all had going in to this campaign which is the new Lakers are not known for their scoring penchant.
3. Lonnie Walker IV’s debut. LW4 got some solid minutes in starting hot and cooling off. Hit hist first three and went on to miss the next 6, I believe, and didn’t look to aggressive attacking the basket. Coming back from lower body injuries is always a process though so really it was just nice to see him get up and down.
4. Turnover leads to turnovers. This is basically the second straight season the Lakers have over-hauled the roster. It’s also the third in which key members of a banner winning team were let go without much reason or rhyme. It shows in a stat like turnovers. If it takes a few weeks to months for guys to get truly familiar with one another, and you’re not a consummate pro, the chemistry side of the ball can be a long time coming. The Lakers are averaging a grip of turnovers to start which isn’t great because turnovers were a key part in our general undoing last season. Can’t blame LeBron or Russ, either, they didn’t play. I can handle turnovers in preseason but they need to start coming down into the 110-13ish/game range. Which is a little above average. 12ish is elite and I just don’t expect that from guys who take risky passes in both James and Westbrook.
5. AD’s injury. Has to get mentioned even though coach Ham went out of his way to try and make it a non-issue. He should take a Popovichian route and deflect with one/two word answers. In reality this kind of injury is common but Lakers fans have AD injury PTSD in a big way so any minor injury is certain to be semi-overblown amongst the fan base. Goal is to get everyone through preseason healthy and ready. That ain’t changed.

Hoping to see more starters from here on out. Would like to win at least one game, not because it’ll have any bearing on the standings but because of the spiritual significance. The fans need a W to calm their hyperbole down a bit. Still, just coming out of preseason healthy will be good enough for me. Just would be nice if there was a shred of momentum to the start of the season.

Well, that didn’t make things any better. Lakers came out OK in the first half (with what looked like actual in-game rotations, for the most part) and then put the kids in and watched them get blown out. It’s getting hard for some Laker fans to keep their emotions out of the process of early evaluations for a lot of reasons. Last season’s debacle, no Russ trade, and not really an inspiring summer that makes one feel it’s close to turning around. Not surprisingly the good people who paid money to see this left grumpy and let the team know it.

1. The Trio looked OK. AD looked solid, Russ looked like Russ and LeBron looked like a guy in his 20th NBA season taking his time getting his legs going. Nothing to report here, preseason vibes all around. I will say that when the young guys are getting blown out and the “team leaders” are hooting it up on the bench it does set a tone.
2. The center question. I came away hoping to see Bryant as the starting center, just think he’ll open up the floor more. DJ is serviceable but I just trust Bryant’s shot more at this point. If we want to develop Jones into a stretch three, fine, but let’s do it off the bench in what should be a more orchestrated play calling environment when James and Davis are off the floor. No need for him to learn next to LeBron and he’s a better dunker which will open up the screen and roll game for Schroder.
3. Nunn might also be better coming off the bench. Mainly because we need a bonafide scorer when James and AD sit. Swap him and Reaves or Beverley and I think the starting five will be fine. Taking Reaves off the bench unit and into the starting five shouldn’t be an issue, he played with everyone last season and will help that unit gel quicker. Nunn and Reaves shouldn’t really be tasked with running the offense, Nunn might get there but let the sophomore get into a solid role mindset and do well before adding to his workload. Both had way too many TOs last night for their role on the team.
4. Heart was an issue last season, looks like it could be again. Everyone and their keyboard railed on coach Vogel for losing the team since they didn’t play with enough heart or passion. Fast forward to the new coach, new team, new season and…same as it ever was. This part of the game isn’t learned, you bring it from within. You can’t coach passion into guys, they either want to dominate or they want to play. Looks like we have more players than dominators, albeit in a small sample size. Mainly this looked like a bunch of guys who have played a weekend’s worth of pick up hoops in San Diego and gone through some sets the coach wants to run. Hoping for more cohesion as time goes on. Leery of the issue of heart being something of an internal/cultural issue, though.
5. Young guys with something to prove showed they might not really be ready. Scrubs on scrubs and ours got wasted for 24 minutes. Out played, out hustled, out everything’d. Looked way too much like last season, hence the booing. If you’re here, you’re under 27, and on a minimum deal this is sort of your last, best shot to re-write your narrative. Carpe diem, young bloods, carpe diem.

Still, it was the first game and the guys who will be playing more looked OK. Not going to read all that much into this other than noting that utterly rebuilding the team every summer just isn’t the way to build a contender. This is a square 1 team, no need to think of this squad as the “semi-recent champs” but rather the “we have a couple really, really good guys who were part of a never-to-be-replicated banner and guys who couldn’t get a better deal” Lakers. Time will tell what they’re made of but the first glimpse was pretty underwhelming.

Training camp is here and with it come all the regular platitudes and exultations that come with not having played a game that means something. If you tuned into Lakers/NBA Media Day 2022 you got to hear the infamous “we’re going to be a defense-first team” or some such repeated ad nauseum. Of course Rob will be diligently working the phones looking for that perfect Russell Westbrook trade, you can definitely believe him when he says that. Darvin Ham is large and in charge, for the most part, and for the time being. We’ll see what comes of the situation after 10 or so games. Still, if you’re a die-hard Lakers fan like myself, media day meant one thing: we got through summer! No, there was not a Westbrook trade that reinvigorated the fan base. There was a THT trade which brought in Patrick Beverley which resulted in this quote from Pat regarding how he and Russ found common ground. It is absolute gold: “We went on this boat ride, you feel me? It was just us two. It was real intimate,” Beverley said. “It was 2,000 candles, you feel me? He landed in a helicopter. I came in one of my underwater vessels. We talked three hours over wine. He had a two-Michelin-star chef come pull up, cook some steaks. I had my chef pull up and make the desserts. And that’s how we got to where we are now.” Classic.

1. Sooooo that Westbrook guy is still here. Implausibly, but not impossibly, Westbrook is still a Laker. For now. I believe Rob when he says he’s trying to improve the roster. Just that’s happening completely on his terms which means no deals past next summer and if it’s for both picks it has to be All Star level talent coming back. That means Russ is here until the calendar turns over to 2023, in my opinion. Now…”will he get dealt by the trading deadline?” is the next big question on that front. I’m not so sure. Some things have to fall into place for me to buy into that beyond giving it a cursory 50/50 chance of going down. There is the compelling idea of re-tooling the roster with cap space and draft picks between draft day and the opening week of free agency. I won’t go into all of the ins and outs of that here because, well, this is about training camp and the guys on the roster as I type this now. In terms of Westbrook’s role, which is the new hot topic du jour, you can forget about him coming off the bench or being sent home. It. Will. Not. Happen. Not for 20 actual games or more. The Lakers have long prided themselves of being the elephant’s graveyard of NBA superstars. Russell Westbrook, for all his flaws, is still a superstar talent…in the eyes of the Laker front office. They will treat him as such; yes I know, coach Ham said everything would be determined by competition and what works best but that’s as truthful as the Rockets talking about having a defense-first identity. It’s the kind of thing that simply must be said on media day because, you know, that’s basically what media day is for. Russell will start, he may even finish games and that will be the current Laker modus operandi because it is the historical Lakers modus operandi. Russell will take minutes away from guys like Reaves, Nunn and even Swider because that is how the Lakers treat superstars aging out of the league. Gird your loins and prepare your soul, for that is what will be happening barring an O-fer start reaching Mike Brown levels. Again.
2. The new coaching staff. I think everyone but Phil Handy is gone from the Vogel era. Sheed did not make it onto an NBA bench preferring his current gig or maybe not wanting to taint himself with this hot mess. Regardless it’s basically a whole new crew coaching the Lakers. Sounds like they started things off in the film room laying down expectations and ground rules and all without showing any clips of the Bucks kicking booty. Smart on that one, I say, because it shows some respect for the current crop of Lakers and their ability to get on the same page and show up to work together. They know what Giannis can do, they’ve all experienced it first-hand, or will in the case of the rookies. Other than that we’re just hearing what every coach says before the games matter. This is the calm before the storm and I’m sure we’ll get more candid comments from coach Ham after some wins and losses. All in all, for where we’re at in the season the coaching staff is doing great!
3. Those that remain. I’m talking Nunn, Reaves, and Gabriel. The guys not named Russell Westbrook, LeBron James, or Anthony Davis. Hearing that Nunn played five on five was awesome. It really was, it gave me a lot of hope I didn’t expect when I heard it because it does give Ham an option beyond the 34, going on 35 year old Beverley, Schroder (who is basically Westbrook lite) and throwing Reaves in at PG just because. As I said above I expect at least 1/4 of the season to go by before a move like that is made. Still, having the option if Nunn can play and play well, will put the right kind of pressure on the situation to make it more possible should the need arise. Reaves will be looking to build off a decent opening salvo to his career. Gabriel will likely struggle to make the team unless he can show some solid worth backing up the 4 spot, maybe some light 5 duty. I feel like we need guys who can shoot and it’s not like Wenyen is a real difference maker on D.
4. The new guys. Lot of new dudes, whole lot. From Patrick Beverley to Dwayne Bacon there are, once again, more new Lakers than old. While this is nto the ideal way to build championship chemistry on the roster this overhaul absolutely had to happen. Gone are Kent Bazemore, Wayne Ellington, Trevor Ariza and the walking/talking tree known as DeAndre Jordan (and others). Out with the old and in with the new takes on a whole different meaning when you look at the roster from last season vs. this season’s roster. We got younger, more athletic but also less skilled and still with a lack of outside scoring expertise. More questions than expectations with this new crop of Lakers. Can Lonnie Walker IV take a step? Can Swider shoot well enough his lack of defense allows him to carve out a role on a team with banner hopes? Will Max Christie play much at all? That Dennis Schroder guy will be back at some point, how will he be used, if much at all? Early preseason games will likely feature a lot of these guys so hoping from some form of clarity at that time.
5. Anthony Davis and LeBron. All of the above matters but those two are where it’s at. I’ve seen a lot of people expressing a myriad of opinions about how much they want to see AD play this season: 50 games, 60 games, all the games. For me, if he plays in 70 games and we manage him so that he has gas in the tank for the playoffs I’ll be to the moon. Same goes for LeBron except I could see him edging lower, closer to 60-65 games. Now, how does that affect our playoff hopes is an entirely different equation. No good saving a man for a party he won’t be attending. The Lakers need to reverse the bad pattern they established very early last season: don’t lose to bad teams. Multiple times you heard a post game session with one Laker or another bemoaning how the other team just had to play harder. That’s not a culture allowed only by Frank Vogel, who had clearly lost the team by December, that’s also on your two best players and I throw Russ in on that one, too. You’re being paid millions of dollars to show up to play a game, you can do more than just lead by example. Get in guys’ faces for blowing rotations, get on Russ for missing layups, get on LeBron and AD for lazy length of the court plays that are nigh impossible to make and so on. Nothing of worth is given in life, it must be earned, it must be taken and that won’t come easy.

So it begins. My starting five prediction: Bryant, AD, LBJ, Reaves, Russ. Second unit will be Jones, JTA, PatBev, Nunn and Schroder. Closing line up will be Davis, James, Russ and our best two guys, whomever that may be. That’s for at least the first 20 games or so. Barring injuries and without having seen anyone play. Coach Ham has his work cut out for him but if we have health on our side it’ll already have a better look than last season’s team did. Go Lakers.