An odd scheduling quirk for the Lakers this week left them with a good bit of time off between games. After playing on Tuesday, the Lakers have been off and won’t play again until Sunday.
While they’ve
spent plenty of time practicing this week, they also took some time away from the court to be competitive as well. On Friday, the team held a pickleball tournament which was won by Jake LaRavia and assistant coach Beau Levesque.
If you’re like me, the first thing you did was zoom into that bracket in the background to find out who all the other teams were. In the final, LaRavia and Levesque met Luka Dončić and (presumably) assistant coach Ty Abbott.
By far the most interesting team is LeBron James, Rui Hachimura and assistant coach Greg St. Jean. However, they lost in the first round to Austin Reaves and Jarred Vanderbilt. I’d pay money to see footage of that game.
Not every team had a player on their team and the nicknames make it hard to decipher exactly who did and didn’t play. It looks like Maxi Kleber and Gabe Vincent were on teams on opposite sides of the bracket. It also looks like President of Basketball Operations Rob Pelinka was on a team that could have played JJ Redick’s team.
Also, JJ’s team lost to Luka’s team and I absolutely need to hear the story about that. I’m sure both gentlemen have stories that definitely aren’t much different from one another.
You can follow Jacob on Twitter at @JacobRude or on BlueSky at @jacobrude.bsky.social.
