out<\/a> with injuries.<\/p>\nDon\u010di\u0107 was brilliant as usual and looked ready for another All-Star campaign, while James played a role off the bench.<\/p>\n
Los Angeles wasted no time setting the tone with a 73-47 halftime advantage thanks in large part to Don\u010di\u0107’s contributions. He poured in 21 points before intermission as he connected from beyond the arc, attacked the lane, got to the free-throw line and created opportunities in transition.<\/p>\n
He also facilitated when defenders collapsed on him, which made life easier for all his teammates. Quentin Grimes found his scoring stroke early, while Ziaire Williams, Matisse Thybulle, Sandro Mamukelashvili and Jake LaRavia all drained multiple threes.<\/p>\n
It was clear the offense is going to run through Don\u010di\u0107 with LeBron James no longer on the roster, and he already looked to be in midseason form.<\/p>\n
In fact, he was so effective there was no need for the Lakers to play him in the second half.<\/p>\n
Bronny James, on the other hand, saw the court in the second half. The third-year playmaker has never been more than a secondary playmaker off the bench for Los Angeles, so it came as no surprise head coach JJ Redick gave him an opportunity to make an impact in the preseason.<\/p>\n
While the USC product certainly didn’t take over as a scorer, he impacted the game in other ways by crashing the boards and dishing out multiple assists. He also hit from three-point range.<\/p>\n
That three-point shooting will be important if he is going to earn playing time this season, as the defensive attention Don\u010di\u0107 draws should create a number of open looks.<\/p>\n
He will have another chance to make a preseason impact Thursday when the Lakers face the Golden State Warriors.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It’s just preseason, but the post-LeBron James era is off to a solid start for the Los Angeles…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":917816,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[574],"tags":[64,63,726,85],"class_list":["post-917815","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-basketball","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-basketball","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/917815","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=917815"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/917815\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/917816"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=917815"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=917815"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=917815"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}