After a busy offseason, the Los Angeles Lakers were able to shape one of the deepest rosters in the NBA. Even though this is great news for the team, it creates an interesting problem for new head coach Frank Vogel.
With the Lakers roster being so deep, let’s analyze initially the guard position.
In a matter of guards, the team added veterans Danny Green and Avery Bradley; alongside the youngers Quinn Cook and Troy Daniels. Besides, they re-signed Rajon Rondo, Alex Caruso, and Kentavious Caldwell-Pope. That gives the team a total of 7 guards, and that doesn’t even count LeBron James, who according to reports, has been practicing at the point guard position for late-game situations.
The question of what will the Laker backcourt be can only be answered by Frank Vogel, but clearly, he has multiple options and different characteristics to work with.
- Rajon Rondo is a pass-first point guard.
- Alex Caruso has shown signs of being a dynamic point guard.
- Avery Bradley has the reputation of a defensive guard.
- Quinn Cook and Troy Daniels present themselves as shooters.
- Danny Green and Kentavious Caldwell-Pope are seen as three-and-D players, with Pope being more inconsistent.
Coach Vogel will have to ask himself what characteristics is he looking for to set the starting guards for the lineup. He will have a total of 6 pre-season games to experiment with the different options the Lakers present, with two of those games have already been played. In those games, the win against the Golden State Warriors, and the loss against the Brooklyn Nets in China, Vogel used 4 different guards in the starting lineup.
Against Golden State, the backcourt was conformed by Bradley and Green, while in the loss against Brooklyn it was Rondo and Caldwell-Pope.
It will be interesting to see if the Lakers continue to mix the backcourt in the next games, as coach Frank Vogel goes through the process of finding the complementary pieces to peer up alongside LeBron James and Anthony Davis.
Featured Image: Via Marca
