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August looks set to be a quiet month for the Los Angeles Lakers. With Vander Blue and Thomas Bryant officially signed last week, the team’s roster stands at 15 players. While they will probably invite a few more guys to compete with Blue for their 15th roster spot, it seems unlikely the Lakers are going to add any players of major significance over the next several weeks heading into training camp.
Instead, with such a young team one of the keys to the Lakers’ season will be internal improvement. As the front office prepares to pitch players like LeBron James and Paul George on joining them in free agency, they’ll need their young players to show growth in order to look like a foundation worth building on top of.
To that end, the Lakers are hitting the gym hard this offseason, and forward Larry Nance, Jr.’s Instagram story gave us our latest look at what Brandon Ingram and Ivica Zubac are up to with new trainer Gunnar Peterson:
Brandon Ingram and Ivica Zubac are putting in work in the gym today pic.twitter.com/Z5sxhtorcx
— Harrison Faigen (@hmfaigen) August 1, 2017
Basketball is obviously about more than physical strength, but the Lakers appear to be putting the necessary time in as they attempt to better themselves.
A culture of putting in extra work is one of the values that Magic Johnson and Rob Pelinka have often espoused during their addresses to the media, and it seems like we’re starting to see the results of that.
Harrison Faigen is co-host of the Locked on Lakers podcast (subscribe here, or listen to our latest episode talking LeBron, Lonzo Ball and free agency with Mark Medina below), and you can follow him on Twitter at @hmfaigen.