The Los Angeles Lakers are in a complex situation this season. Head coach Luke Walton knows this.
They added the best player in the league in LeBron James this offseason, which immediately took the team from an interesting group of developing youngsters to a near championship contender.
Along with James came a group of veterans on one-year contracts like JaVale McGee, Lance Stephenson, and Rajon Rondo.
This created a hodgepodge group that could go either way when the regular season starts, and it is head coach Luke Walton's job to make sure that they mesh and perform up to expectations.
Per Christian Rivas of the Silver Screen and Roll, Walton has a plan to mix both player development while satisfying Lakers fans demands for results right away.
When asked how he would divide the two aspects to create the best team possible, Walton claimed that;
“As a coach, I sit down once we have our roster and spend time looking at what’s most important for our group and what we need to dedicate our limited time to starting with camp and practice, and that does change with the roster changes that we’ve made, but we still know we have a young group of players that’s a big part of our future, so it’s important that we still develop them, but it’s just a different style of development now. It's not the ‘let them play 35 minutes, learn from the mistakes, play through situations.’ Now it’s ‘look, this is what we’re doing. We got a lot of guys on this team and if you’re not doing it right, you’re going to learn by coming out and watching other people do it,” Walton continued. “It’s getting to the same point, it’s just teaching them by using different lessons.”
It sounds like Walton will have a much tighter leash on his players once the regular season starts. He has already proven that his young players do not have their starting roles set in stone by choosing to start Rondo over Ball, at least for now.
The one certain fact this season is that Walton will be in the hot seat if the Lakers fail to impress.
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