The new-look Los Angeles Lakers suffered an early 124-107 preseason loss to the Denver Nuggets on Sunday night, a growing pain to be expected with a freshly assembled roster with not much experience playing together. Coach Luke Walton won't overreact to this loss, hoping to take the positives while also honing into the negatives through the course of training camp.

“There were tough moments out there,” Walton said afterward, according to ESPN's Ohm Youngmisuk. “But we're gonna stick with it. We're not gonna overreact. A lot of these guys are playing out of position. They've had some reps in practice with it but haven't gone against other NBA guys. We knew that it could get frustrating and it was at times, but we also had moments when it was really good when we got stops and were able to get out and run and see what that could look like.

“And then I thought we had four or five chances to have more possessions like that that we let rebounds hit the ground and we weren't the ones to go get them so we fought really hard defensively, but we didn't finish out the possessions. There were some highlights and lowlights to those lineups.”

The Nuggets, playing without two of their best players in Gary Harris and sixth-man-to-be Isaiah Thomas, had minimal issues taking on the Lakers, who showed some potential but not enough to come out with the win.

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Walton started LeBron James at the power forward spot and experimented with smaller lineups, but he surprisingly reaped very little from the starting backcourt of Rajon Rondo and Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, who totaled four points between them in 44 combined minutes, going 1-of-8 from the floor.

Walton is still fine-tuning his lineups and will likely make the most of these growing pains, turning them into teachable moments.