Podcast: What to watch for in Lakers preseason opener

The Los Angeles Lakers are mere days from opening their preseason schedule. Repeat that back to yourself. Go ahead, take your time. We’ve just about made it. In a few days, we’ll finally see LeBron James, Russell Westbrook and Anthony Davis all on the court in Lakers uniforms. Wild.

So, seeing as this is the last Lakers-specific podcast on the SSR Podcast Feed, this week’s “I Love Basketball” will focus on what to watch for Sunday when the Lakers take on the Brooklyn Nets. Sabreena Merchant and I start with, well, the starters.

First, we gave lineups that we’d like to see, seeing as they tend to be different from the lineups that actually start games. Then, we predicted the lineups that we’ll actually see Sunday and then gave reasons as to why it’s something to pay attention to.

From there, we explained another reason to pay close attention to the minutes James, Westbrook and Davis share the court. It’s fairly simple: Habits.

The first preseason game with new teammates is kind of like the first day of school. As kids, we’d do our hair, wear our best outfit, show up early, all that good stuff. Over the course of the school year bad habits would show up, but that first day, our best foot was forward.

In this case, we can hope to see what things James and Westbrook especially try to focus on as they learn to play together.

In the second half of the show, Sabreena and I look back on the illustrious career of Pau Gasol, given that news today dropped that he will be officially announcing his retirement on Tuesday. We could’ve talked about Pau for hours, to be completely honest. Congratulations on an incredible career, Pau.

You can listen to the full episode below, and to make sure you never miss a show, subscribe to the Silver Screen and Roll podcast feed on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher or Google Podcasts.

And for a short-form recap pod, check out Lakers Lowdown, in which Anthony Irwin recaps the previous day’s news and gets you ready for the day ahead in LakerLand, every weekday morning on the Silver Screen & Roll Podcast feed.