The Los Angeles Lakers were one of the last teams to enter the bubble at Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida, meaning they continue to be one of the final to complete the 48-hour phase of quarantine.
While some players were already out and about within the campus, Lakers players were still confined to their hotel rooms heading into Saturday. Some teams have been practicing for a couple days now, as Tuesday was the first date teams began arriving in Orlando.
Those teams cleared their quarantine phase by Thursday and began practicing. That now has applied to the Lakers, who completed quarantining Saturday and are due to hit the court for team activities.
The Lakers will now have over a week of practicing before scrimmages begin on July 22. This will give them time to figure out the rotation for these games. Lakers head coach Frank Vogel has already said he plans on using all 17 players for the three scrimmages and eight seeding games, but still doesn’t know exactly what that will look like.
Part of Vogel’s job will be to figure out exactly where JR Smith and Dion Waiters fit in. Vogel has praised both for their talent, but said he’s unsure who will get opportunities each night. ”
I don’t know exactly where they’re going to fit into a rotation. Whether it’s going to be both of them, one of them, neither of them on certain nights,” he said.
“Those answers will play out over the three weeks of training camp, scrimmages and seeding games. They’ll have opportunities in those seeding games to show what they can do and how they fit into this group.”
Luckily, the Lakers are all but cemented in the Western Conference’s No. 1 seed. This means they’ll have basically 11 games to experiment with the rotation before the playoffs begin on Aug. 17.