At 10 a.m. on the 19th, the Lakers will face the Warriors in their new NBA season debut, but they are still chicken feathers.
Throughout the summer, the Lakers recruited a lot of recruits, abandoned last season's "Sunset Red Club" and began the youth army training program. But in the eyes of ESPN and other media, these measures are just minor repairs for the Lakers, after all, the lineup with Will Shao, Davis, and James as the core is still the main framework of the Lakers.
James and Davis are gearing up for the new season.
Of course, the biggest change for the Lakers is to bring in coach Davin Hamm to try to get him to change the embarrassing situation that Will Shao is in now.
Whether the comeback or falling apart, the Lakers seem to be able to break it down into 5 parts to observe. But the only thing that is certain is that this team with its own hot search physique will still become the noisiest place in the NBA in the new season.
Will Will Wei Shao be traded for the new season?
Proud Wei Shao compromised?
For the Lakers, the core issue is still the fate of Will Shao.
In the offseason, whenever there is a trade, there will inevitably be Wei Shao's name, but after the Lakers have turned around the trading market, everyone opens their mouths to sign two first-round picks in 2027 and 2029, and finally can only leave the market in a ruthless manner.
For the current Lakers, how to use Will Shao has become an urgent problem, so in the preseason game against the Kings, Will Shao played as a substitute for the first time since his rookie season.
This is the test of coach Hamm, and former Lakers coach Vogel also tried this, but it ended up in the end of the season. Hamm's choice today is no different from Vogel's, but it seems to be more effective.
Although Wei Shao only suffered a thigh injury after playing this game and left early, Wei Shao now seems to have been smoothed out of the edges of pride.
Before this game, when the collective training was officially over, Wei Shao first cautiously looked around to see if anyone was still videotaping, and then muttered quietly as he walked to the nearest player channel: "The work of the basketball part is over." ”
After all, in the game between the Lakers and the Timberwolves, Wei Shao did not participate in the Lakers' encirclement ceremony when he entered, nor did he participate in the player meeting organized by Beverley, and the attention of the two videos is far more impressive than the victory or defeat of this game.
For this reason, Wei Shao had to reiterate that "he was communicating with the coach and did not pay attention to Beverley" while berating the title party. As for his role as a substitute, he himself seems to have compromised.
Otherwise, coach Hamm's tone would not have changed from "this is not a relegation, just an adjustment" to what I am today: "No matter where I put him, whether it is starting, quick rotation and playing with a substitute, he will perform well." ”
The emperor is about to turn 38 years old.
What if James gets old?
In addition to Will Shao, the Lakers have to admit the fact that James is aging. At the end of this year, James will turn 38, which will also be his 20th season in the NBA.
Although James averaged 30 points per game last season, he has to admit that James has been unable to combine both offense and defense.
On top of that, James is no longer as healthy as ever. In the first 15 seasons of his career, James missed only 71 games, but in the past 4 years of his Lakers career, James has missed 84 games.
When he was young, James seemed to be able to put on the mantle again with just a stomp, and now this kind of scene seems to be difficult to appear on James...
Even when it comes to his vision for the new season, James' answer is about physical condition: "Vision? I don't really have any vision for this season. Ever since I came here, health has been the biggest issue for our team. ”
'Our only goal is to stay as fit as possible and give us a chance to win every night.'
Rather than the question of winning, which is uncertain for the time being, fans seem to be more looking forward to whether James can surpass Abdul-Jabbar to become the NBA's all-time scoring leader this season, after all, the two are now only 1326 points apart.
Of course, for James, the record is great, but it also means getting old: "I think it's a big thing, it's one of the records in the history of sports that people want to break the most." And in my personal opinion, I have never made this a goal, it means nothing to me. ”
Can "Thick Eyebrows" Davis regain his peak form?
The problem of thick eyebrows is only health?
Similar to James' expectations, Davis' biggest goal for the new season is also health, "I want to play the full 82 games." ”
In the past two seasons, Bushy has missed more games than played. But the team's concerns about thick eyebrows don't seem to be just health issues.
In mid-June this year, some netizens posted a video about thick eyebrows, in which thick eyebrows were attending a party, in which a friend threw a basketball to him and said: "Shoot a basket." The latter responded with a smile: "I haven't shot a basket since April 5." ”
What time is April 5th? It was the time to play the last game last season. That game also declared the Lakers out of the playoffs. In the next three regular season games, Thick Eyebrows did not participate.
In other words, since playing in the regular season last season, Bushy has not even practiced shooting for 70 days.
This is where thick eyebrows are now criticized the most, and he doesn't seem to work as hard as before. From the figure of the thick eyebrows to his projection, it seems to confirm the status quo of the thick eyebrows stagnating.
Even last season, some people on the Lakers had doubts that thick eyebrows were no longer the player who helped the team win the championship in 2020.
In addition, the location of the stadium has always been the most talked about around thick eyebrows. Over the past few seasons, Bushy has resisted playing the role of centre-forward, but new boss Hamm has repeatedly hinted at the need to play the team's starting centre-forward.
"He knows I'm not going to put him in a position where he can't handle it and I'm not going to let his play be affected. I see him more as our best attacking weapon, he can pull the opposite basket guard out of the box and I think he will play well. ”
And the thick eyebrows seem to be accepting a new identity: "I want to win, and if that means I have to play the number five, then I play." ”
However, against the Timberwolves in the preseason, the problem of thick eyebrows playing center was also exposed. The Lakers sent Wei Shao, Beverley, Lonnie Walker, James and thick eyebrows to start, but this short lineup with an average height of 1.96 meters could not withstand the impact of the Timberwolves.
Compared with James' guarantee of the lower limit of the Lakers, thick eyebrows symbolize the upper limit of the Lakers, whether the team can turn over against the wind, thick eyebrows are the most important wings of the pair.
Beverley joined the Lakers.
The Lakers' projection firepower has become better?
One summer, the Lakers changed from the original sunset red lineup to the current youth janissaries, but the projection problems that plagued them still seem to have not changed.
Last season, the Lakers shot 34.7% from three-point range, ranking 22nd in the league, and the team's best three-point shooter was James himself.
Now in the first five games of the preseason, the Lakers' outside projection can only be described as miserable, with a total of 58 three-point shots and a shooting rate of 29.3%.
However, in the core rotation of the Lakers, there is still potential to be tapped. For example, Beverley shot nearly 38 percent from three-point range in his career, while Nunn's long-range shooting was 36.4 percent.
Projective ability may become one of the most important indicators of whether Lakers players can stay on the court. For example, Matt Ryan, left by the Lakers, is fancy for his accurate projection.
In the preseason game between the Lakers and the Warriors, it was Ryan who scored 20 points on 6-of-9 shooting from three-point range in a single game that finally helped the Lakers win the game.
Since then, coach Hamm has begun to give Ryan more playing opportunities, whether it is against the Timberwolves or against the Kings, Ryan has been given playing time in the first half.
However, coach Hamm also said that he prefers players with good offense and defense over three-point shooters, so that teams can block opposing attacks and speed up counterattacks, looking for three-point opportunities in conversions.
"We want to play fast," Hamm says of the team, "we want to empty the middle so that there are chances everywhere." ”
Lakers new coach Hamm.
Can a defensive coach practice defense?
Looking forward to the new season, what impresses Lakers coach Hamm the most is his eloquence.
From his first appearance as a Lakers head coach, Hamm left fans with a talkative impression, "When we watch the game video, I have to criticize LeBron, Will Shao, thick eyebrows like Austin Reeves and Stanley Johnson, which is the sense of responsibility from top to bottom." ”
Defence has become the focus of the new manager's every speech. After all, during his time with the Bucks, Hamm was mainly responsible for the team's defense, and in his opinion, the team's foothold was defense.
"Those nice jumpers and not looking at people passing the ball are not part of my game. I used to be a blue-collar player. That experience taught me to be prepared and built the mentality that I wouldn't want to take shortcuts. We need to pay attention to the details. ”
But watching the Lakers' game last season can know that the Lakers have always played the basketball of "who defends who eggs", and their defense a year ago only ranked 21st in the league, which is still in the hands of Vogel, who is also known as the master of defense.
So the Lakers' changed lineup has absorbed more relatively young and more athletic players. Like Lonnie Walker, Troy Brown and Toscano Anderson, plus notorious defenders like Beverley, they should have done better.
But looking at the whole lineup, the quality of the players is still insufficient. At the small forward position, James' most reliable candidate behind him is Toscano Anderson, a player who was abandoned by the Warriors last season.
In addition to the thick eyebrows in the center position, Thomas Bryant and Damian Jones do not seem to be reliable defenders.
Even more unfortunate, the Lakers were full of injuries before the start of the game, and Schroder, Troy Brown Jr. and Thomas Bryant were all confirmed to miss the opener against the Warriors due to their respective injuries.
So coach Hamm said before the start of the game: "The most important thing for us is that the squad is in order, I think we are trying to implement the new system, both offensively and defensively, when our main players return to the stadium en masse, the situation will definitely be different, now we are only at the beginning of this marathon, it will take some time. ”
At this point last year, Vogel seemed to say something similar. It's just that at that time the Lakers waited for a whole season, and the team didn't clear their minds...