The Los Angeles Lakers are one NBA team that isn't easy to get a read on about a month before the start of training camp. After losing LeBron James and several other starters and rotation players, they added nine new players, including center Walker Kessler, while giving Austin Reaves a four-year, $185 million contract.
This is now unquestionably Luka Doncic's team, and he already showed leadership by holding a minicamp for his teammates in his native Slovenia. Some are cautiously optimistic about how this new-look team will do, but others, such as some analysts at ESPN, feel the squad will be a disappointment.
Former Lakers forward Robert Horry sounds a bit bullish about how things will go when he talked to Lakers Nation, but his words also carried
some uncertainty.
“My heart says I can’t root for Walker Kessler because he went to Auburn, but now I have to (laughs),” Horry told Lakers Nation at the 26th annual Harold & Carole Pump Foundation celebrity dinner. “But it’s gonna be interesting. Walker Kessler is a guy they’ve been coveting for a while and you think about all the pieces that they added.
“Quentin Grimes is a guy who is a nasty guy. There’s a saying we like to say where it’s you gotta bring some nasty to the game and that’s one of the things that he will do. It’s gonna be really interesting how the system is now without LeBron. You saw glimpses of it when he was out at the beginning of the season, but now you got Luka healthy, you got AR healthy. It’s gonna be very interesting to see how this goes.”
Last season, Los Angeles finished the regular season with a 53-29 record and the fourth seed in the Western Conference. Despite losing Doncic to a season-ending injury in early April and being without Austin Reaves for much of April, it upset the Houston Rockets in the first round of the playoffs before getting swept by the Oklahoma City Thunder in the West semifinals.
Its roster is now considerably younger, not to mention a bit speedier, deeper and more balanced. But it doesn't have a clear-cut third scoring option, and it still lacks plus defenders on the perimeter. These are issues the Lakers will have to sort out if they want to prove the naysayers wrong.
This article originally appeared on LeBron Wire: Robert Horry: 'It's gonna be very interesting to see' new-look Lakers
