The Los Angeles Lakers have a completely different team than they had last season. While the Lakers did bring in several players who previously played in LA, the only members of last season’s team that are on this season’s team are LeBron James, Anthony Davis, Talen Horton-Tucker and Marc Gasol.
That was by design as the Lakers traded three rotation players for Russell Westbrook and then had to go to work in replacing the rest of the roster. Last year’s team had a disappointing first-round playoff exit that was mostly due to injuries but can also be blamed on the team’s cohesion as a unit.
The four main players that the Lakers brought in last offseason — Dennis Schroder, Montrezl Harrell, Wesley Matthews and Marc Gasol — did not have the collective impact that they were hoping for. It was time to turn the page.
Head coach Frank Vogel now has a brand new lineup that he has to learn how to maximize over the course of an 82-game season. Vogel has been criticized for his rotations before and it is paramount that he does not make certain mistakes this season.
There are 4 key mistakes that Frank Vogel must avoid making with the Los Angeles Lakers rotation.
There are going to be a lot of moving parts and a lot of variables and nobody is going to be able to sit here today and predict exactly what the Lakers’ rotation looks like (even though I did take my shot at it and predict how many minutes the new signings would play a few weeks ago).
What we can pinpoint with relative certainty are the things that the Los Angeles Lakers shouldn’t be doing with the rotation.