Last night in San Diego had a little bit of everything for everyone. LeBron James made his preseason debut for the Los Angeles Lakers, the Denver Nuggets can celebrate one of their bigger wins of the year and oh, some Lance Stephenson fans beat the hell out of each other right in front of me. Everyone won!
Usually, Monday episodes of Locked on Lakers are dedicated to opening up and diving into the iTunes mailbag. When the Lakers play on Sundays, though, the schedule gets tweaked a bit.
So, on today’s episode, I break down the game with some instant reaction, with the intent to eventually re-watch the game and look a little more closely into some of the things I noticed from the stands.
Let’s start with that LeBron guy.
I was pretty surprised at how many minutes he played, though he very rarely fully exerted himself. Still, seeing him in that uniform and knowing now that it’s actually real was quite the moment.
In terms of his actual play, it was very obvious that he wanted to passively learn about his teammates in that setting. This led me to an observation about one way he might be able to lessen the impact of long minutes in ways he hasn’t been able to in recent years.
Basically, with so many creators on the court with him, he can rest up on occasional possessions, a luxury he didn’t have in Cleveland after Kyrie Irving was traded to Boston.
The second segment was devoted to Brandon Ingram, who really surprised me with the impact he was making on the defensive end. If that continues, the fit with LeBron makes a ton more sense.
The final segment of the show covered Rajon Rondo, who is incapable of remaining idle. That was fun to watch.
As always, this is just a tidbit of the full context given in the show. Listen to the full discussion below and please check out old episodes, or guarantee you won’t miss any ever again by subscribing on iTunes.