In the grand scheme of the the championship puzzle, the Lakers have their biggest pieces well in place.
The past week saw the franchise secure their two stars, LeBron James and Anthony Davis, for years to come, meaning that the toughest part of title-chasing – holding onto top-flight players – should be in the bag.
But it takes the right circumstances to win it all. While the Lakers found the right mixture last season with veteran leadership and physicality, and while they’ve been widely praised for their offseason moves that made them younger and more offense-oriented, nothing is guaranteed – even title favorites can stumble.
The rest of the West might be gunning for the Lakers, but a repeat bid will be challenged by the circumstances of a short offseason and the COVID-19 threat as much as the competition, which is deep throughout the league. With the Lakers scheduled to hold their first group workout Sunday, here’s a look at the key facets of training camp that merit keeping an eye on:
GETTING UP TO SPEED
The Lakers’ first preseason game is Friday, just six days after their first group workout: Yikes.
Frank Vogel wasn’t shy about how challenging that will be. Less than two months removed from leaving the bubble, most of the returners haven’t been able to go through their normal offseason training regimens. While there are surely a handful of unsanctioned games happening, the normal rhythm of a month of pick-up hoops has been dramatically interrupted by the pandemic. Markieff Morris was likely the most honest: “Next few days are going to be a little tough.”
The challenge for Vogel between now and Dec. 22 is to get his players, particularly the ones with short offseasons, to get back into playing shape. It might not be worth risking a lot of preseason minutes for James, who Vogel said fans would not see “a ton” in exhibitions. But for other rotation players, particularly younger members like Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, Kyle Kuzma and Alex Caruso, they’ll have to get up to find their conditioning probably faster than they’d like.
This week will start with “small doses,” Vogel said, and the Lakers will probably diffuse minutes up and down the roster rather than lean heavily on starters.
“We don’t want to overdo it early with those guys, but at the same time, the games are coming up very quickly so we also don’t want to ease in so much that we make them vulnerable in those games to injury,” Vogel said. “So, we’re going to have to, on a day-to-day basis, try to strike that balance.”
WHO GETS TO START
A week into the new era of the Lakers, there’s already a minor stir about starters – which is bound to happen on a roster with more than five starting-caliber players. Dennis Schröder laid early claim to a spot and said he believed that was a reason the Lakers brought him in. Vogel handled the matter diplomatically, saying he had not made a decision but Schröder certainly is under consideration (which should be the case for a 19 ppg scorer with Schröder’s overall talent).
The James and Davis starting roles are locked in. If the Lakers want to orient themselves like last season, with James as the primary point guard and two defensive starters in the backcourt, having Wesley Matthews and Caldwell-Pope makes sense. But Vogel added he believes James can play off-ball effectively with Schröder, and that has appeal. It could be an early issue that one of those three guards will have to come off the bench, because all could be starters.
To a lesser extent, the starting center position is not publicly settled, and Montrezl Harrell is a good deal more productive and has a higher salary than Marc Gasol, who is turning 36 this season. While Rob Pelinka described Harrell as “a terror and a beast to play against,” his game is oriented inside the paint, which crowds the floor offensively in lineups with Davis. Gasol, who has an outside shot and can move the ball adroitly around the court, looks on paper like a better fit in the starting lineup.
Vogel balanced these concerns well last season, bringing a starting-caliber center off the bench (Dwight Howard) and mixing up a guard rotation by swapping up closers. It will be worth watching how well his diplomacy works in a new group.
“I really take pride as a head coach in making sure I hear the player, whatever player you’re dealing with and what role is important to them, and for me to try to create that role for them,” he said. “If they feel good about their role, they are going to run through a wall.”
DEFENSE FIRST?
What jumps off the page about the Lakers roster is they have four players who averaged at least 18 points per game last season – but the defensive talent that left (Howard, Danny Green, Avery Bradley, Rajon Rondo, JaVale McGee) is considerable. The Lakers had the third-best defense in the league last season (106.1 defensive rating), a point of pride that came through in the playoffs when the team was able to mold fluidly into different schemes and styles Swiss-army style.
There’s glaring holes on that side of the ball, starting with no clear rim-protector outside of Davis. Gasol is a savvy former Defensive Player of the Year but his athleticism has faded; Harrell is better suited to guarding on the perimeter. Matthews has a sterling reputation as a wing defender, but he’s older than Green was. Schröder has been an average defender at best in his career.
The way the Lakers talk about defense hasn’t changed. Davis especially stressed the need for a defense-first culture. But the reality is the emphasis has shifted. It will fall on many of the returners, including Caldwell-Pope, Kuzma and Caruso, to set the tone of defense and physicality to help the newcomers get acclimated. Gasol and Matthews can add to that as well.
FINDING THE SAME CHEMISTRY
On what stood out about last season, Davis had an answer that leapt to mind: “I think that chemistry is what I loved the most about our team, 1 through 15. Every guy liked each other. That’s something that’s very rare on teams.”
It is extremely rare, and even though the Lakers are now bringing back nine players from last season’s team – Quinn Cook was re-signed Friday to a minimum deal – it’s worth wondering how the group bridges the chemistry with newcomers in a pandemic-stricken world.
The 2019-20 Lakers started bonding over a pre-camp trip to Las Vegas, then over team dinners, nights out on the road and parties at home for birthdays and holidays – winning games in the regular season smoothed out a lot of bumps in the road.
Is that existing framework a strength? Or is it an obstacle for the newcomers? As Jared Dudley reflected on how tough it would be to replicate the events that helped the last team get so close, he acknowledged: “I’m sure we’ll do something.”
It may help that the team will probably spend so much time together in relative isolation. But with limited social outlets, it also could be a lot tougher. The Lakers are conscious of that.
“After our roster’s finalized, we’ll get our group chat going, we’ll get the jokes and the inside story that everybody wants to know that nobody will ever find out,” Caruso said. “We’ll get those conversations going and then from there on we’ll just kind of find time to reconnect as a team.”
STAYING SAFE
The looming question over everything is how the league can pull off a season with normal-ish travel. While the 72-game schedule won’t have many in-arena fans and will have limited travel parties with strict guidelines about what players and staff can do, there’s simply a lot more risk involved outside of a bubble environment. The struggles of football and college basketball to conduct normal seasons are constant reminders of what a Sisyphean task a new season will be.
The NBA added guidelines this weekend to its existing list of protocols, including rules about socializing and eating out on the road, who can visit players and team staffers at hotels, and how the league will handle potential vaccines (strongly recommending players and staffers get inoculated). The visceral threat of COVID-19 has the power to delay games and set back stars, even glossing over the ramifications to health.
Minnesota forward Karl-Anthony Towns gave a chilling reminder of the cost of the pandemic Friday by revealing seven of his family members, including his mother, have died from the disease – which reinforces that the threat is not just to players and traveling employees, but also their families.
Dudley said the Lakers have talked about being accountable to each other with COVID-19 safety – the Lakers understand that they’re putting their health in each other’s hands.
“My thing is, I don’t want to miss the practice,” Dudley said. “I don’t want to be on the bottom line when you guys do your job with ‘Jared’s out with COVID.’ And it’s hard to, you know, prepare for that 100 percent, but we can do our part.”
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