When the Lakers opened training camp with their first practice on Tuesday in El Segundo, there were a lot of new faces inside the building.
And many familiar faces were nowhere to be seen.
Gone were LeBron James, the league’s all-time leading scorer who spent eight seasons in Los Angeles before joining the 76ers.
Same with Rui Hachimura, who spent 3 ½ seasons with the Lakers before joining the Clippers, as well as Marcus Smart, Deandre Ayton, Luke Kennard and Jaxson Hayes, all of whom played important roles for the Lakers’ playoff series victory over the Rockets in the spring.
Enter nine new players on the Lakers’ roster and a lot of new possibilities as the franchise fully establishes itself in the Luka Doncic era.
Doncic lobs to marquee free-agent addition Walker Kessler? Check, with Kessler saying Doncic threw him around four lobs on Tuesday, quickly establishing a connection.
“It was great,” Doncic said. “We had a lot of fun, a lot of teaching points, and everybody I think felt that it was like it was a great first day.”
The beginning of a battle for two of the Lakers’ open starting spots? Check, with the team’s wings competing for minutes establishing the defensive physicality during the first practice.
“We went after it from Day 1,” Kessler said. “So it’s fantastic.”
Outside of the new faces, which included shakeups on coach JJ Redick’s staff after longtime assistant coach Bob Beyer’s retirement, the first practice of camp didn’t look much different than it did during Redick’s first two years as coach.
The installs and teaching for this portion of preseason will look the same, with Redick acknowledging his growth as a teacher, continuing to build off the small-group sessions players had in August and throughout September.
The excitement for what this new group can be is palpable.
“They are a very receptive group, eager group,” Redick said. “Even a couple of the guys that sat out a portion of the live play were constantly asking questions, and they want information. and they want to learn and they want to be better.”
And there’s also clear goals for camp ahead of the first preseason game against the Kings in Sacramento on Monday: establish their defensive principles, continue to establish their early offense (which was their main priority for all of September) and get in “great shape.”
“We’ve gotten terrific buy-in over the last several weeks,” Redick said, “and [Tuesday] was very additive to those three things.”
But with so many new faces in the building, it led to a key question: Are there ways to fast-track on-court chemistry so everyone’s in sync when the games start to count beginning with Opening Night against the Warriors in three weeks (Oct. 21)?
“That’s a hard question — I honestly don’t know,” Doncic said. “Some things [we’re] going to figure out quicker; some things are going to [be figured] out later. I feel like we had a great first practice. A lot of teaching points. It was a great practice.”
And for now, that’s all Tuesday needed to be.
With a lighter preseason schedule compared with the previous year (five exhibitions instead of six), the Lakers will have more time to work out the kinks that could come with such drastic roster turnover.
Their teamwide trip to Slovenia, which Doncic led, helped fast-track the players’ connections with each other.
And that connection, which was felt on Tuesday, already has most of them believing they can compete with not just the best teams in the Western Conference but throughout the NBA.
“No question — undoubtedly,” Kessler responded when asked whether the Lakers can be NBA title contenders. “We have a lot of great tools and a lot of versatility. The guys are already getting along. Connection makes championship teams, and we definitely could be a contender.”
Like Redick mentioned last week, no team is a championship-level team on Sept. 29.
And they likely won’t be on Sept. 30, either.
The journey to becoming a contender is an ongoing process that lasts from the early fall all the way through the following spring.
But the Lakers felt great about Tuesday being a step forward in that process.
Which is all that the first practice needed to provide.
