Lebron James. Anthony Davis. Russell Westbrook. The infamous trio here to save Los Angeles. The NBA season is right around the corner and the Los Angeles Lakers are back for yet again another chance to win an NBA Championship. Nia Harris has more.
Last season the Los Angeles Lakers disappointed their fans, being eliminated in the play-in-tournament.
The Los Angeles Lakers spent the off season rebuilding their team in hopes of a better season than last.
Part of that effort was hiring a new head coach, Darvin Ham, for the team in hopes to execute changes needed to be potential championship contenders.
The Lakers struggled last season defensively, this off season they added new players such as Patrick Beverley and resigned players such as Dennis Schroder to strengthen their defensive depth. Kendrick Nunn is a returning player for the Lakers who will also help on the defensive end of the ball.
Going into this upcoming season, health is a concern in the success for the Los Angeles Lakers. Maintaining a healthy team will benefit the Lakers winning record. Due to injury, their superstar duo in LeBron James and Anthony Davis missed multiple games in the previous season. LeBron only played 56 games and Anthony Davis only played 40 games out of the 82 regular season games.
Lukas Landsgesaell, a Lakers fan from Germany says;
Lukas Landsgesaell: I think health is probably the most important thing, especially with Anthony Davis because he was often injured and last season I think James, Westbrook and Davis only played 21 games together. And I think if they can stay healthy then yeah, it will be better than last year.
With the new additions to the team roster, chemistry is a major factor in the new construction of this team. Having multiple dominant players like LeBron James, Anthony Davis, and Russell Westbrook who are known facilitators, seeing how the players share the ball will depict if this team’s chemistry will hinder their ability to win.
Cameron Cole: That’s going to be hard. What might work better is if LeBron takes more of an off the ball approach and just tries to figure out ways to get less touches, but maybe be more of a facilitator, maybe possibly take him point guard. So give him less touches. Let other people who need it work.
Says Cameron Cole, a senior studying computer science and business at USC.
As stated previously, the trio has only played 21 games together, winning only 11. Hopefully, unlike last season’s 41 changes in the starting lineup this season brings more stability.
The Lakers off season brought many adjustments to their roster but fans still believe the Laker’s competition may be too much of a challenge for them to go far this season.
Cameron Cole: I don’t think they can make it to the conference finals. You’ve got too many good teams that are going to be ahead of them.
We’ll just have to wait and see how the Los Angeles Lakers perform when their regular season starts Oct.18th.