The Los Angeles Lakers are a young team. While they have players like Brook Lopez and Luol Deng that have been around for a while and can help their core develop, Los Angeles is built around a young group of players that it hopes will bring it a title sometime soon.
It’s an ambitious approach, and like all teams that have an eye on the future, there will be growing pains. There’s not too much that the Lakers can do about it other than use those moments as opportunities to teach guys like Lonzo Ball and Brandon Ingram.
One such moment happened on Friday night during the team’s 101-92 loss to Toronto. Lakers coach Luke Walton wasn’t happy with his starting five’s defensive effort during the third quarter, so he did something drastic and pulled his starters. As he told the press on Saturday, he did this to get a point across.
Luke Walton said he took the starters out early in the third Q, because they didn't get back on transition defense, wanted to send a message
— Serena Winters (@SerenaWinters) October 28, 2017
What was that point, exactly? Unsurprisingly, it’s that they need to show some heart on the defensive end.
Luke: "When they didn’t get back on a transition break, there are kind of telling me that they don’t really want to finish that game." https://t.co/LP95SIip3r
— Serena Winters (@SerenaWinters) October 28, 2017
Of the Lakers’ five starters, only Lopez is older than 24. Kentavious Caldwell-Pope (24), Larry Nance Jr. (24), Ingram (20), and Ball (20) are all going to be prone to these lapses, and with the culture that Walton is trying to build in Laker Land, these moments can be really important. They’ll have the opportunity to show whether it made an impact on Saturday night when they travel to Utah to take on the Jazz.
