2. Will the backcourt score?
"This will be very interesting considering Rajon Rondo and Lonzo Ball will be playing. The major question going into this game is…how will Lonzo Ball fit into the scheme of positionless basketball that Luke Walton is trying to implement?"
Aftermath…
In nineteen minutes of action, Rajon Rondo scored the same amount of points as I did writing this piece and you did reading it. Zero points on only two shots. Rondo did have seven assists, two rebounds and two steals. You may not see it now, but this will be an issue down the road.
As for Lonzo Ball,
He played very well for someone who hadn’t seen the court in a while. Ball scored seven points, grabbed four rebounds and had four steals. To be clear, Ball is far from one hundred percent, but you can see that he is a lot stronger on the court. Sometimes you see players hit the weight room in the offseason but don’t know how to use it to their advantage (think Dwight Howard). Ball looked comfortable and played a little bit of bully ball…
.@ZO2_ showing some hustle! 🙌
— ESPN Los Angeles (@ESPNLosAngeles) October 11, 2018
(@NBA) pic.twitter.com/IB59857WyC
That’s not no 98 pound weakling he powered over there. That’s Klay Thompson, one of the best defensive guards in the league. When he trusts that knee…Uh oh!
As for the Lakers backcourt…
"Whatever this positionless basketball the Lakers are selling will not work if everyone is not contributing on the offensive end. Good teams will isolate these guys and take advantage if they don’t look at the basket. The backcourt has to look for their offense and not look to LeBron James for everything. WATCH FOR THIS! The Lakers have only won one preseason game this season. They won when they got contributions from the backcourt. In their lone victory, they got 60 points. In the loss to the Clippers, the Lakers only got 30 points."
The Lakers got positive contributions from the backcourt tallying 41 points. Kentavious Caldwell-Pope led the backcourt surge with 20 points. This was far and away the best game of the preseason as he dropped three of six from the land of plenty. Coming into the game he was shooting a G-League 14 percent from the three point line.
Lakers fans…chalk it up for the season next week. If the backcourt brings points to the table. The Lakers win. If they don’t, they lose simple as that.