Los Angeles Lakers head coach Darvin Ham recently made a significant change to the starting lineup, inserting Jarred Vanderbilt in the place of D’Angelo Russell in order to focus more on defense.
Not only has that change drastically affected the starting lineup, but the second unit as well with Russell being reunited with his former starting backcourt mate Austin Reaves, among others.
So far the change has led to mixed results as the Lakers beat the Oklahoma City Thunder on the road and then lost to the Boston Celtics at home. In their most recent game against the Charlotte Hornets, the Lakers starters fell down by nine early before fighting back to take a one-point lead into the halftime locker room.
The Lakers then came out and dominated the Hornets in the second half to earn a blowout victory at Crypto.com Arena.
Led by Reaves and Russell, the second unit played a big role in building up that lead in third quarter, so much so that LeBron James and Anthony Davis did not need to come back in the game.
After the win, Reaves discussed the addition of Russell to the second unit and how that can be beneficial for the team.
“For me, I’ve been coming off the bench so it’s not really anything new to me. But trying to implement such a good player like DLo to the second unit is good for us,” Reaves said. “It’s an opportunity for us to have a great opportunity to really win those bench points, all of the statistical categories and give those guys opportunities to breathe, Bron and AD. But we played alongside each other last year and went to the Western Conference Finals and felt like we competed at a high level and hopefully we can continue to do that. At the end of the day, the main thing is to win basketball games. That’s all that anybody really cares about.”
Russell had his best game since being moved to the bench, finishing with 16 points, three rebounds and nine assists while Reaves contributed 16 points of his own to go along with two rebounds and four assists.
It remains to be seen if Ham will stick with these lineups and rotations permanently, but Reaves and Russell did play well together in the starting lineup last season so there is some proof of concept when it comes to that backcourt pairing.
Austin Reaves believes Lakers need to figure out identity
The regular season is almost halfway through and to this point, the Lakers have been up and down as evidenced by their 17-15 record.
Reaves believes the Lakers still needs to find their identity, which has been a challenge with so many guys being in and out of the lineup and the rotation changes that come with that.
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