So far, the Lakers have yet to play with all of their main rotation players available for a preseason game. That won’t change on Wednesday as they face the Mavericks in Las Vegas.
Austin Reaves and Luka Dončić will both be out for this matchup, missing the second night of a back-to-back after playing on Tuesday against the Suns.
Besides Luka and Austin, the Lakers will also be without Deandre Ayton, Jake LaRavia and Marcus Smart, who are all resting. Bronny James is also ruled out for this contest due to an ankle sprain. The injury is considered minor.
On the plus side, Gabe Vincent, Jaxson Hayes, Rui Hachimura and Jarred Vanderbilt, who all missed Tuesday’s game, will play Wednesday against the Mavs.
The issue here is that there has yet to be a game where head coach JJ Redick has had everyone available this preseason. So, he hasn’t had the chance to run the kind of lineups he will play on Oct. 21 when the Lakers face the Warriors on opening night.
While avoiding injuries is important, it would’ve been nice to see the Lakers have some kind of dress rehearsal here in one of these back-to-back games. This way, players could be in their expected roles early on, and Redick could see how it looks.
During training camp, Redick mentioned wanting to have two games the Lakers could use as a dress rehearsal, but that clearly didn’t happen.
Now, the final chance to test things out for the Lakers this preseason will be on Friday when the they play the Kings in Los Angeles.
Los Angeles was rolling in the first half against Phoenix before they started playing their deep bench guys and consistency fell apart.
Hopefully, the Lakers don’t start the regular season slow due to a lack of cohesion and chemistry coming from their limited gametime together against opponents.
We’ll see if remaining relatively healthy and having an intense training camp is enough to still hit the ground running this October.
Or, perhaps treating Friday’s contest against the Kings as a dress rehearsal will be enough to fall into a groove and be ready for next week when the games will finally count.