This year’s Lakers preseason has been more about what hasn’t happened than what has.
Friday, though, we’ll finally see the Lakers take a more serious approach in the finale.
Lakers head coach JJ Redick stated after their loss to the Mavericks that they’ll be treating their last preseason game as a dress rehearsal.
“Yeah, again, plans change,” Redick said. “But Luka’s minutes will go up from last night. Similar to how [Jason Kidd] did his minutes tonight with his rotation. We’ll get those guys some normal rotation run through early parts of the fourth.”
It’s great that the Lakers will at least get one game to try out their normal rotations in a competitive setting. Training camp can be as intense as you want it to be, but nothing can replicate the setting of an actual NBA game, even in preseason.
Now, we’ll see how good the Lakers currently are against a Kings team they’ll be competing against in the Western Conference.
This is especially crucial with the Lakers having new players like Marcus Smart, Jake LaRavia and Dandre Ayton who are expected to be significant parts of this team.
They haven’t gotten much preseason time with Luka in games, and with the regular season fast approaching, they need these minutes to work things out and make the start of the year as successful as possible.
It’s not just the players that need to gel, but Redick could benefit from this as well.
He can now test out his rotations and see if he wants to replicate Friday’s minutes distribution on Tuesday when the Lakers open up the season against the Warriors at home.
Ultimately, this matchup with the Kings won’t count in the record books, so instead of throwing it away, use it as a final chance to experiment with zero consequences.