During the 2023-24 NBA regular season, the Los Angeles Lakers have rarely been able to practice, 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 couldn’t avoid having to deal with players coming in and out of the lineup due to injuries. Players are going down left and right, making it difficult for this Lakers team to see what they can truly be 100%.
However, this week has given the team some opportunities to work on the training pitch, with three consecutive 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 fundamentals on the Lakers’ practice court. the team in El Segundo.
“Just looking at some things defensively, looking at some things offensively, just talking about the basic fundamentals,” Ham said. “Being better with the ball, guys being alert and active behind the ball, making sure we have AD or Jaxson [Hayes], whatever our big is and they’re going to block a shot or something, make sure we have our backs covered to get their guy off the glass. And then offensively, continuing to work on our rhythm, getting into what we want to tackle early, getting to a second and third action, not just going slow, and now we only have one option to attack. We have numbers that support the fact that when we address what we need to do early enough in the first quarter or the shot clock, the first six seconds of the shot clock, we are a much better team, and we are capable of 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 defeat. Fortunately, this time around, the Lakers won’t have to face the reigning NBA MVP, who is still recovering from knee surgery to repair a torn meniscus.
Ham talked about this blowout and what they will do to avoid it on Friday.
“It seems like such a long time ago,” Ham said. “We’ve had a few, but I’m proud of our group; we were able to bounce back once we went back to the drawing board, go watch the film and address some things on the practice field that we’re able to self-correct. We’ve done a good job with that all year. So yeah, hopefully starting Friday, obviously they’re different now, without Joel. [Embiid], but it remains a very formidable ball club with a lot of weapons. So we have to be on our Ps and Qs, that’s for sure.
The 76ers aren’t the same team without Embiid, as the team went from one of the top seeds in the Eastern Conference to entering the Play-In tournament without its superstar center, which bodes well for the Lakers’ chances to get a win.
Austin Reaves: Lakers finish season with ‘must-win’ mindset
The Lakers don’t have much room for error moving forward, as it’s not out of the question that they fall out of the Play-In Tournament altogether with a bad streak to end the regular season.
However, Reaves says the team is moving forward with a must-win mindsetwhich they will need to keep their playoff hopes alive.
