(Translator’s note: the author of this article is Jovan Buha, a reporter with the TA lakers. The content of this article does not represent the translator’s and the platform’s views.)
The media day held the 22-23 season representing the Los Angeles Lakers and officially set sail.
After the press conference on Tuesday, the Lakers will start their training camp for nearly a week on Wednesday. Then they will face Sacramento King in the first game of the preseason on October 4. The following are the ten questions we want to discuss before the start of the training camp.
1. How to deal with Westbrook
This is the problem that the Lakers have been thinking about and trying to solve during the off-season this year. As we all know, Pelinka and his colleagues were trying their best to send Wei Shao away all summer. The closest deal with the Lakers is Pacers and jazz. However, judging from the current situation, at least during the training camp, Wei Shao will not leave and will probably continue to be an indispensable part of the team. However, given that the current situation is still unstable, changes may occur at any time. The Lakers may also change their offer later and put the first round of signing as treasure into the deal.
According to TA’s report in early September this year, the Lakers will let weishao fight for the starting position of the new season through training camp performance. The 33-year-old former MVP certainly has the ability to keep the starting for himself, but it requires him to contribute sustained defensive strength and investment, which is exactly what he lacked last season. Other defenders in the team will give him some competitive pressure. The coaching team will inspect beverly, reeves and nunn (schroder has not reported yet) to determine who is more suitable for starting with james and davis.
If weishao is finally traded away, it will inevitably cause a series of chain reactions, affecting the future of many people in the team. Yogueta left behind, the Lakers have obviously a little surplus in the back court, and at least one or two rotating players will be disappointed with their positioning. Another question is, even if wei shao stays, how will he cope with the situation that his role in the team will decline in a high probability next year?
Among all the problems, how to settle the good Wei is definitely the top priority, which will largely determine whether the Lakers will fail for the second consecutive year.
2. Can this group of people keep healthy?
NBA teams can’t escape to face the injury problem, but for the Lakers, this needs more careful discussion. After all, this champion teacher has largely lost to health in the past two years. Last season, the Lakers used 41 different starting lines, ranking first in the league and ranking fifth in the league for their absence due to injury. The tide of injuries came so fast and so early. In the training camp and preseason, Ariza, naen and Horton-Tucker were included in the injury list. Nunn didn’t fight for the Zijin army for even one game all year round.
Compared with role players, the health of James and Davis is the key. In the past two seasons, they have missed more than 60 games every year. Of course, some important rotations are equally important. Beverly, Thomas Bryant and naen all had serious injuries.
If you can’t keep healthy, even if the Lakers can exchange Wei Shao for satisfactory gains before the start of the season, it is impossible to get results in the new season.
3. Can Anthony Davis return to the best team level?
Speaking of health, in the past two seasons, davis has been the top player in the league who has been lying on the sickbed for the longest time. He has missed 81 games in total. Davis’s competition content is still elite, but after frequent injuries, his status last year obviously cannot be compared with that of 16-20 years, at that time, he played the top five of the league in Pelican and Lakers.
In the first season of joining the Lakers, Davis was widely regarded as the world’s top five stars. There is even a chance to compete with James, Durant, Curry, Leonard and Yannis for the throne of the best player. But now he has been completely removed from this list, and Davis ranks ten out of the new season star rankings of all mainstream media. In the internal position, most people think that Davis has been separated by brother yeokic and enbide.
Can Davis still find himself? First of all, he must keep healthy, otherwise everything is empty talk. After that, he still needs to restore the feeling of jumper. In the past two seasons, his jump shots have been terrible, with the three-point shooting rate and free throw shooting rate falling to the lowest point in his career.
From the comprehensive analysis of news from various channels, the Lakers are planning to let Davis play more roles in the attack and even become the main axis. This is a chess that the team management wanted to take many years ago, but Davis’s frequent injuries made them unable to fall. If Davis can keep healthy and improve the hit rate in the new season, he should let us relive the monster-level performance of the Championship season again.
4. What realistic expectations should James have for the 20th season of his career?
Every year, no matter how high people expect him, James will surprise all forecasters with his own standards. Last year, at the age of 37, he scored 30.3 points on average, let all contestant lose their voice with absolute strength. Although some violate the laws of nature, I think he has a chance to do it again this year.
Just like in the past few seasons, the Lakers coaching team needs to allocate playing time and workload to James wisely and reasonably. In his previous career, James was definitely an Iron Man, but in the four years in Los Angeles, he suffered injuries that seriously affected his appearance rate, although there were indeed many accidents. However, as the core of the team, how to help James avoid risks to the greatest extent is definitely a topic that the Lakers coaching team needs to study carefully. After all, there are two completely different teams with or without James’s Lakers.
I can even say that without James, the Lakers would not have playoff. Compared with Davis, James’s health is more important. Of course, if the Lakers’ goal is championship, then they are indispensable. James himself has to make some adjustments, such as reducing the ball holding time, playing against opponents with less threats on the defensive end, or reducing the playing time most directly.
5. Who can win the competition of starting position?
There are three starting candidates for the Lakers: center, point guard and point guard.
The competition between the center is relatively simple. Thomas Bryant VS Damian Jones, the two big players have shown impressive strength in team training, but they are obviously different in characteristics.
Jones’s style is closer to Mackey and Howard in the Championship season. His body size is enough, his physique is quite strong, and his ability to eat cakes inside is outstanding, which will make the Lakers pick up in the gap, there is one more choice for anti-Crane cooperation, so you don’t have to give the ball to Davis every time. On the defensive side, Jones’s pace is faster, with the ability of relieve a garrison outside lines, and even the team quickly returned to the inside line after expansion.
Bryant’s advantage is that he is a more modern center, he shot more than 40% in the 19-20 season and 20-21 season (although he only shot 112 times in 56 games). However, his defensive ability is indeed slightly different from Jones. Bryant’s arm show and strength are better, but his mobility is far less than Jones. In the case that the opponent has a heavy internal line, Bryant’s top defense effect will be better. The Lakers coaching team may have to flexibly arrange two people to rotate instead of setting the starting position to death.
Compared with the insider, the competition in the back court will be much more complicated. Wei Shao was once thought to have locked in a starting position, but judging from recent interviews, his position is not so stable. Beverly can be said to be the most likely to be the first choice. Rivers and Lonnie Walker will be the first competitors of the scoring guard. Troy brown is more likely to play a small forward, and it is also likely to become a victim of too many candidates in the back court and fall out of the rotation lineup. Schroeder played well for the Lakers in the 20-21 season, but he hasn’t reported to the training camp yet. Nunn hasn’t played the official game for more than a year, and they will join the competition later.
The new coach of the Lakers Ham’s recent speech is of great reference value. He thinks that the first choice is not as important as it seems. Large-scale and multi-frequency rotation has become the mainstream of the league. But there is no doubt that it is very important for the players to play the starting game. There is no obvious difference between the talent and skill of this group of players, so the starting position will directly determine their playing time.
6. If we solve the problem of insufficient excellent flank defenders?
Like last season, the Lakers lack excellent flanking players-especially on the defensive side.
When they play against strong teams such as warriors, Clippers and Celtics, the Lakers will be at an obvious disadvantage at both ends of attack and defense due to the quality gap between flanking players. The flanks of the above teams are all about 2 meters tall, and they all have Tatum, Leonard, Paul-George, Jay-Brown, the top offensive and defensive all-around flank like Wikins and Clay Thompson, when they retreated, leaned back and shot receive the ball, the Lakers had almost no outside players to stop, even basic interference. On the defensive side, they can completely eat the little scorers of the Lakers with the advantage of figure.
The best flanking defenders of the lakers at present may be beverly, reeves, anderson and brown, but their problems are obvious. They are too weak in size. It can be predicted that after the start of the playoffs, james still has to take up the work of playing against the opponent’s outside Star, which will greatly consume the veteran’s energy. Davis can provide some help in specific games, such as defending Leonard against the Clippers, but it will keep him away from the penalty area and rim. The Lakers who lack heavy eyebrows will suddenly open their doors.
If there is any fatal flaw in the defense of the lakers now, it may be that the level of outside defenders is not enough and beverly is excellent, however, the overall physical disadvantage will make them suffer from a group of high defenders and strikers every night. The Lakers management knew their weaknesses very well, but they did not find a solution after studying for a summer. They failed to get any frontal line player that could stand on the defensive side in the transaction. Maybe the situation will be slightly improved in the playoffs. James and Davis can solve this problem to a large extent through full load startup, but you can’t ask them to burn themselves like this in the long regular season, this is obviously not in line with the core interests of the team.
7. Who can turn outside opportunities into scores?
Last season, there was only one player in the lakers team whose three-point shooting rate was higher than the league average (). He was james. This is definitely a big problem, and it may be more worrying than the lack of flanking defenders in many cases.
Now NBA has become a three-point league. In the past ten years, almost every championship team has been the top 10 team with three-point hit rate/hit total in regular season, except for the Spurs in 2014 and the Lakers in 2020. Last season, the lakers ranked 18th in the league in the number of three points, 17th in the number of shots, and 22nd in the shooting rate. It was terrible, wasn’t it? Unfortunately, the Lakers may be worse this year.
The lakers have two top stars who can create a lot of opportunities for their teammates. They are in urgent need of players who can steadily convert the vacancy opportunities into scores outside the line. Last season, a large number of outside scores came from Monk and Anthony, who have left the team now. Several new players in the team this year are not good shooters. How to solve it? Of course, the simplest way is to trade, such as getting hilde from pacers, boyan bogdanovic has been traded to the piston, and the options for the lakers are becoming less and less, and it is time for pelinka to move.
Optimistically speaking, there will always be several players making great progress in the three points in each season, and beverly’s career three-point shooting rate is close to 40%. The shooting abilities of Brown, rivers, Bryant, Nunn and Walker are not too ridiculous. If they can stabilize the three-point shooting rate at 34%-37% in the new season, then the Lakers’ outside attack ability can basically reach the standard. But at present, the lakers coaching team obviously has to do more work on the three-point training.
8. How to arrange the rotation of 10-11 people?
Bucks coach Budenholzer often uses a 10-11 rotation in regular season, which makes several stars under him control the average playing time to about 30 minutes. Hamm followed Budenholzer as a teaching assistant for 9 years and should be very insightful about species rotation. Moreover, considering the depth of the lakers’ lineup-most of the players’ talents and technical characteristics are similar, as well as the urgent need to protect the health of james, davis and beverly, the Lakers are likely to use a similar rotation mode during the season.
This set of rotation will definitely include james, davis, weishao, beverly, rivers, jones, bryant and anderson. The last few positions will allow walker, brown, nunn and schroder to compete. Gabriel and Christie are not in the rotation lineup for the time being, but the former may become a dark horse. His figure advantage and technology have the opportunity to let him break into the rotation after the start of the season.
The Lakers’ lineup is extremely unbalanced now. The defenders occupy half of the list and are all small defenders. In order to make Brown and Anderson (they may be the best two choices for the team’s flanking defensive end) get more playing time, some players on the guard line must make some sacrifices.
The number is the cruelest, but it is also the truest. Each game of small forward + rear guard line only has 144 minutes of playing time, which is difficult for 7-8 players to share. One of Hamm’s top priorities now is to determine the best rotation list.
9. What Mark can Ham leave for this team?
Ham took over Vogel’s from pointer with high expectations, and the pressure followed. Vogel’s led the team to win the championship in the first season of coaching the Zijin Legion. After the bitter 21-22 season, Ham now wants to make Lakers fans regain their happiness from the victory. The reason why the management of the lakers didn’t put all their eggs in one basket until now is largely out of trust in hamm’s ability.
It will be one of the most interesting things in the new season to observe what improvements Hamm can make on the basis of his predecessor’s stay. Like Vogel’s, Hamm is also a coach who takes defense first. He has his own set of principles for defense, such as persistence for relieve a garrison and the height advantage of defenders. In terms of attack, Ham seems to prefer fast-paced play than Vogel’s. Considering that the Lakers and Bucks are building teams around the top stars in the front line, we are likely to see a large number of stag-style offensive tactics in Los Angeles in the new season.
Ham will definitely make some changes, and every coach who first joined the coach will have some different ideas. But coaching the Lakers is completely different from taking charge of other teams. Every detail of this rich team will be put under the microscope by fans and media. For Ham, he stepped onto a stage where the lights were shining. Every move he made would become news, which was very interesting, but it would inevitably bring great pressure.
10. Which player can make leap progress?
Last season, Monk, Reeves and Stanley Johnson unexpectedly became key contributors, far exceeding the expectations inside and outside the team. If it weren’t for the performance of several of them, Los Angeles people would have had a harder time last year. In the case of absolute lack of strength, if the Lakers want to achieve satisfactory results this year, they must have several more players to make great progress.
Reeves still has room to rise, and his second year is worth looking forward. If Brian can keep healthy, his basic salary contract is definitely worth the money. Jones’s contribution to the Warriors has always been underestimated. He has the opportunity to let everyone really remember his name in the Lakers. Walker’s scoring potential is far from being fully explored. Troy Brown has found a suitable position in the bull in the past two seasons, and he has the opportunity to grow into the league’s first-class 3D.
The reason why the Lakers offered Schroeder a contract was that they believed that he could have a second spring in Los Angeles like Howard. Nunn can finally play this year. The 27-year-old is entering the golden age of his career. Anderson’s organizational ability and defense have attracted much attention in the Warriors, but because Jinzhou’s lineup is too deep, Anderson’s light is somewhat covered up.
The Lakers need to be down-to-earth. Last year they didn’t even get the quota to participate in the play-offs. This year, when the overall strength has not improved significantly, they want to achieve the first goal-to enter the playoffs, it is definitely necessary for several of the above players to perform beyond their value.
Original: Jovan Buha
Compilation: Best 15th person
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