The Los Angeles Lakers entered the 2020-21 season markedly improved from a talent standpoint after their successful offseason.
The Lakers managed to get younger and faster by adding Dennis Schroder and Montrezl Harrell, but also kept their depth by signing Wesley Matthews and Marc Gasol. However, head coach Frank Vogel now has the unenviable task of trying to figure out how to best optimize his revamped roster.
The shortened offseason did not give Vogel much time to experiment to determine what starting lineup would be best or various rotations. Vogel did give players like Talen Horton-Tucker extended looks in the preseason, but also limited minutes for LeBron James and Anthony Davis .
As a result, Vogel revealed that he will be using the beginning of the 2020-21 season to tinker and see which lineups work best. “We’re going to look at a lot of different combinations,” he said.
“This whole month, first six weeks of our season is going to be about exploring different lineup combinations. We’ll be creative with it, we’ll learn a little bit more about our team and focus on our habits.”
Vogel explained that he wants to evaluate how the new additions fit, especially with the lack of preseason action. “We have new weapons and we want to see how they fit with what we’re doing” Vogel said.
“But I do think probably the biggest reason why is we didn’t play a lot of preseason games, we didn’t have a month to evaluate these guys playing pickup ball with each other and the the preseason was condensed.
“A lot of the stuff we would typically have answers to at this point, we don’t. It’s going to be one of those things where you just learn about your team while you’re playing games that matter.”
While figuring out the best rotations will take some time, chemistry should not be an issue for Los Angeles as Anthony Davis already believes a natural bond has been formed.
Vogel confident in rotation possibilities
Despite the challenge of trying to mix and match the best players on the floor, Vogel did not sound too concerned. “I have a lot of confidence in a lot of different ways,” he said.
“It’s one of the things we did in practice last week, where we just tried out a bunch of different lineup combinations. It seemed like they all worked. There were positives to all of them.
“I’m sure there’s going to be bumps in the road throughout the course of the season but there’s a lot of different ways we can go that I have a great deal of confidence in.”
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