Training camp for the Los Angeles Lakers has officially come to a close. Luke Walton and his young squad will now head back to Los Angeles with the start of the preseason only a couple of days away. Second-year point guard, D’Angelo Russell, believes the team has made significant strides forward in improving the team during their week-long stint on the campus of UC Santa Barbara.
Once training camp was over, Russell expressed confidence in the team’s improvement over the past week with the preseason drawing near, via ESPN’s Baxter Holmes.
“I feel like we took major steps forward — more steps forward than backward. That’s a successful camp.”
New head coach Luke Walton also thinks the team has gotten better after their time together in Santa Barbara. Walton, like Russell, used the word “successful” to describe the outcome of Lakers training camp, via Holmes.
“Very happy with what we got done, how hard the players competed, the way they’re picking up the information we’re giving them,” Walton said. “Very successful week, in my opinion.”
Walton will get his first glimpse of things the team worked on in training camp during the preseason opener for the Lakers on Oct. 4. Russell and company will go head-to-head against the division rival Sacramento Kings at the Honda Center in Anaheim which will be one of three preseason games played next week.
Following their first preseason matchup with the Kings, the Lakers will head to the Staples Center on Friday to face the visiting Denver Nuggets. Walton’s squad will face the Nuggets twice in three days with the second game being played on Sunday in Ontario at Citizen Bank Arena.
Although it is only the preseason, it’ll be interesting to see how this team functions in Walton’s offense. The Lakers will play a total of eight games in the preseason before taking in the Houston Rockets at the Staples Center in the regular-season opener on Oct. 26.
