The wild ride for this young Los Angeles Lakers team is officially beginning.
Now that training camp is over and the season-long roller coaster ride has begun, what can we conclude about this Los Angeles Lakers team? Are they as horrendous as they looked against the Los Angeles Clippers or as good as they played against the Phoenix Suns?
Will they collapse down the stretch after launching a huge comeback, as they did against the New Orleans Pelicans, or will they hang tough and seal the deal, as they did vs the previously-undefeated Washington Wizards?
It’s no surprise that the answer lies somewhere in the middle. And that, of course, should be expected from a team as young as the Lakers, who will usually start three players with no more than three years of experience, including rookie point guard Lonzo Ball.
Remember, last season the team got off to a great start. Although young players certainly contributed to that success, the lead players were veterans such as Nick Young, Lou Williams, and even the much-maligned Timofey Mozgov, who actually played fairly well for the about first 10 games. The one veteran who had been counted on to set a winning tone but who fell well short was Luol Deng.
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Fast-forward to this season. Young, Williams and Mozgov are all gone. Deng was given a start on opening night but played so poorly that he wasn’t even activated for game two. The only other veterans are newcomer Brook Lopez, who is expected to play major minutes this season, and Corey Brewer and Andrew Bogut, who are not.
It is no secret that the Lakers front office plans to build around the promising Ball and Brandon Ingram. But Ingram just turned 20 and Ball is about to do the same. Six other prominent players are all under age 26: rookies Kyle Kuzma and Josh Hart are 22, Julius Randle is almost 23, Larry Nance Jr and Kentavious Caldwell-Pope are 24, and Jordan Clarkson 25. This is one of the youngest rosters in the NBA.
Ingram is an intriguing talent. He will again have games like opening night when he shot just 3-15. But hopefully, he will many more similar to game two, when we got a glimpse into why this youngster might indeed have a special future as he scored a career-high 25 points and was 9-14 from the field.
Ingram’s strength is his all-around ability. That takes longer to master than one individual skill such as 3-point shooting or scoring in the post. Lakers fans can only hope that his development mimics the rise of the ‘Greek Freak’, Giannis Antetokounmpo, who also entered the NBA as a multi-talented 19-year-old.
In each of his first four years, the Greek Freak has increased his points, assists, rebounds, blocks, steals and field goal percentage (courtesy of basketball-reference.com). Now in his fifth season, he has been spectacular through the first few games and is being mentioned early-on as an MVP candidate.
Meanwhile, coach Luke Walton is having fun in his personal laboratory, testing different lineups, trying to find out which young players mesh best together. His experimentation should continue during the early part of the season as Walton decides which player combinations he wants to use on the floor.
Depth is one of the team strengths, which should positively impact player effort. We all know that Magic Johnson and Rob Pelinka are watching closely to see just how much development the Lakers make this year in the areas of both individual improvement and as a team. That will help them determine how to best construct the roster going forward.
However, for now, the main predictable trait of this youthful Lakers squad is that it will be unpredictable… game-by-game, even quarter-by-quarter.
Fans must understand that it is a work in progress, and success won’t happen overnight, certainly not in the powerful Western Conference, which features teams such as the Warriors, Spurs, Rockets, Thunder and Clippers. All of those teams have multiple All-Stars on their rosters rather than young hopefuls.
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So fasten your seatbelts, sit back and enjoy a wild ride all season long.