Hoping to turn the page after a week of uneasiness leading up to the trade deadline was met with poor play on the court, the Los Angeles Lakers held a practice in San Francisco on Friday, ahead of their game against the Golden State Warriors.
“It’s a new day,” Lakers coach Frank Vogel said. “I think our group had great energy today. Both in a team film session and in practice. I think there’s just a natural reset energy to our group, knowing that the trade deadline has passed. This is the group that we put together to start the year. This is a group we believe in.”
Vogel, who said after L.A.’s loss to the defending champion Milwaukee Bucks on Tuesday that “our energy as a group isn’t good right now,” said he could feel a change, even though the group wasn’t actually changed. The Lakers were one of eight teams to sit out the deadline without making any moves.
“I think with that deadline passing and having a refreshed mindset today, our group had really good energy about going out and trying to win a game [Saturday] and understanding and believing in what we can do this year,” Vogel said.
As optimistic as Vogel might have sounded about drawing a line in the sand and treating the final 26 games of the regular season as a fresh start, a string of events leading up to Thursday are clearly still being hashed out internally within the organization.
The most pressing of those issues, considering the franchise’s stated goal of competing for championships above all else, is an apparent disconnect between Lakers vice president of basketball operations and general manager Rob Pelinka and L.A.’s leaders, LeBron James and Anthony Davis, on the team’s inaction at the deadline.
“Throughout this process we had different things we looked at and like I’ve done in the past, had conversations with LeBron and Anthony about it and I would say there’s alignment here,” Pelinka told reporters on a videoconference a couple of hours after the deadline passed Thursday. “And that’s all…
Source : espn
