The Lakers Might Be Good Enough to Beat You With Two Superstars Tied Behind Their Backs
A 20-year-old G-Leaguer and a polarizing role player led two different Lakers lineups to outscore the Clippers’ starters in consecutive preseason wins.
Published in
8 min readDec 14, 2020
On a Friday night only 61 days removed from winning the NBA title, the Lakers showed off some of their new toys from the off-season in a sloppy, low-scoring win.
While I know that preseason games mean nothing, I expected the Clippers to make a statement in their opening shift.
After all, they started the game with last year’s core of Kawhi Leonard, Paul George, and Patrick Beverly, while adding their big free agent upgrade in Serge Ibaka. The only downgrade from last year’s big Christmas Day win over the Lakers was starting Nicolas Batum over Patrick Peterson.
The new-look Lakers started Kyle Kuzma, the only player who has started games when either LeBron or Anthony Davis sat out, plus three of their off season acquisitions: Dennis Schröder, Montrezll Harrell, and Wes Matthews.
