The basketball world is eager to see the LeBron James-Luka Don\u010di\u0107 pairing. Sure, we got a glimpse of it last season, but what\u2019s to come could be new.<\/p>\n
Don\u010di\u0107 arrived in Los Angeles in February. He had no training camp with the Lakers. Coach JJ Redick improvised on the fly, implementing an offense that revolved around James and Don\u010di\u0107. But those two gentlemen did not always interact.<\/p>\n
James and Don\u010di\u0107 played in 25 games together. One is the greatest player of his generation (at worst). The other is one of the all-time offensive hubs. But James screened for Don\u010di\u0107 on only 44 pick-and-rolls, according to Second Spectrum. The reverse is even more jarring. Don\u010di\u0107, who doesn\u2019t screen as often as James does, set only seven picks in James-operated pick-and-rolls. That\u2019s less than once every three games.<\/p>\n
Now, Don\u010di\u0107 has a training camp to grow chemistry with James. And yet, the dynamic between two basketball experts is not the most drastic way the team will change.<\/p>\n
The Lakers\u2019 defense is a wild card \u2014 not just in terms of quality but also in terms of style.<\/p>\n
Read more about it in my Western Conference Storylines preview below.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The basketball world is eager to see the LeBron James-Luka Don\u010di\u0107 pairing. Sure, we got a glimpse of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":242392,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[4,450,451,3,452,453],"class_list":{"0":"post-242391","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-breaking-news","8":"tag-breaking-news","9":"tag-breakingnews","10":"tag-headlines","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-top-stories","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242391","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=242391"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242391\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/242392"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=242391"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=242391"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=242391"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}