Over the course of the 2023-24 NBA regular season, the Los Angeles Lakers have rarely been able to get in some practice time, with the team wanting to stay as healthy as possible in order to endure the rigors of an 82-game campaign.
Even without practice time, the team hasn’t been able to avoid dealing with players being in and out of the lineup due to injuries. Players have been going down left and right, which has made it difficult for this Lakers squad to see what they can truly be at 100%.
However, this week has given the team some opportunities to get some work in on the practice floor, with three straight days without a game. The Lakers will take on the visiting Philadelphia 76ers on Friday at Crypto.com Arena, but in the meantime, as head coach Darvin Ham revealed on Thursday, they’ve been working on some basic fundamentals on the team’s practice floor in El Segundo.
“Just us looking at some things defensively, looking at some things offensively, talking about just basic fundamentals of things,” Ham said. “Being better on the ball, guys being alert and active behind the ball, making sure we got AD or Jaxson [Hayes], whoever is our big and they go to block a shot or something, make sure we have their backs covered in terms of getting their guy off the glass. And then offensively, continuing to work on our pace, getting into what we want to get into early, getting to a second and third action, not just going slow, and now we only have one option to attack from. We have numbers to support the fact that when we get into what we need to get into pretty early in the first fourth or the shot clock, the first six seconds of the shot clock, we’re a much better team, and we’re able to explore different options.”
The last time the Lakers faced the 76ers, Joel Embiid and company crushed the team, as Philadelphia beat Los Angeles by 44 points in what turned out to be an embarrassing loss. Fortunately, this time around, the Lakers won’t have to deal with the reigning NBA MVP, who is still recovering from knee surgery to fix a torn meniscus.
Ham talked about that blowout and what they’ll be doing to avoid that on Friday.
“It seems and feels so long ago,” Ham said. “We’ve had a few of those, but I’m proud of our group; we’ve been able to bounce back once we get back to the drawing board, go look at the film, and touch on some things on the practice floor that we’re able to self-correct. We’ve done a good job with that all year. So yeah, hopefully, going into Friday, obviously, they’re different now with no Joel [Embiid], but still a very formidable ballclub with a lot of weapons. So we have to be on our Ps and Qs, for sure.”
The 76ers aren’t the same team without Embiid, as the team has gone from one of the top seeds in the Eastern Conference to being in the Play-In Tournament without their superstar center, which bodes well for the Lakers’ chances of getting a win.
Austin Reaves: Lakers finishing season with ‘must-win’ mindset
The Lakers don’t have much room for error moving forward, as it isn’t beyond the realm of possibility that they fall out of the Play-In Tournament entirely with a bad stretch to finish the regular season.
However, Reaves claims the team is moving forward with a must-win mindset, which they’ll need to keep their playoff hopes alive.
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