PALM DESERT — After sitting out of the Lakers’ preseason-opening 124-107 loss to the Minnesota Timberwolves on Friday, LeBron James and Anthony Davis are expected to make their preseason debuts against the Phoenix Suns on Sunday at Acrisure Arena.
James said after the team’s practice Saturday that he plans to play against the Suns, while coach JJ Redick said Davis is also expected to be available.
The Lakers’ star duo sat out the first exhibition, with Redick citing their gold-medal run with Team USA at the Paris Olympics over the summer and their workload during training camp as why they didn’t play.
“We want to carry over with what we did [Saturday] at practice,” James said. “We were very intent on what we want to accomplish going forward. [Friday] was one of those first games. It’s been a while since a lot of guys have played in a game setting. And it looked that way.”
While the moment when James and his son Bronny James, the Lakers’ second-round pick in June’s NBA draft, shared the floor didn’t happen Friday, the elder James had an up-close view of Bronny’s preseason debut.
Bronny James scored two points on 1-of-6 shooting and led the team in blocked shots with three.
“For him, it’s obviously an adjustment,” LeBron James said. “Every rank that you climb, it’s always an adjustment to get used to it. When he went to high school, from middle school from high school to USC and now to the pros, it’s always an adjustment to make. The more time he’s out on the floor with pros, the speed, the cadence, you get better and better the more time you put on the floor.
“And you’ve got to think that he lost pretty much a third of last season because of the condition. But he’s gotten better and better every day. He continues to put the work in. And it’s up to us as the veterans and the guys out here to try to help him, help Dalton [Knecht], help all the young guys to get him better and better every day to help them accomplish what we want to accomplish.”
LeBron was complimentary of Knecht, the Lakers’ first-round pick who scored 16 points on 7-of-11 shooting from the field and 2 of 5 on 3-pointers.
“He’s a pro,” LeBron said of Knecht. “He’s ready to go now.”
HONEST ASSESSMENT
Redick, coming off coaching his first NBA game, was honest in his assessment of Friday’s game.
“Defensively the carryover from practice, in terms of some of our switching rules and our pick-and-roll coverage, wasn’t great,” Redick said Saturday. “We cleaned that up a little bit. They’ve been really good at it in practice. And sometimes the game starts and it’s the first time playing in a game in a few months and you can lose focus.
“Offensively I mentioned organization [Friday] and that’s the biggest thing that stood out on that end. And then, some small attention-to-detail stuff just in terms of how we want to run different sets.”
The team’s screening was one of the “attention-to-detail” aspects of Friday’s game that could’ve been better.
“The screening was [expletive], but we’ll get better,” Redick said. “It’s something we’ve emphasized. We’ve really implemented it in player development. We didn’t focus – and it was intentional, it’ll be intentional, really, thorough the preseason – we’re not focused right now on the opponent.
“When you play a team like Minnesota, there’s a specific emphasis you have to make on your screens in terms of our four screening options. We didn’t emphasize that in the pregame meeting. That’s on us. But we’re more focused on what we’re doing versus the opponent right now.”
Redick said he was most disappointed with the Lakers’ execution of their one-through-four switching on defense.
“We didn’t execute that at all,” he added. “We maybe executed it less than 10% of the time. It’s something we’ve drilled and it was very clear in the pregame meeting that that’s what we were doing. So you certainly question, like, am I not making this clear? Is it something I’m doing?”
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Redick said before Friday’s game that he’d try to give himself some grace when it comes to some of the nuanced stuff the Lakers are looking to execute.
But when it came time to watch the film, he couldn’t help being hard on himself.
“A little bit,” Redick said. “But again, we talked about it [Saturday] morning in our film session. We’re all on the same page.”
SUNS AT LAKERS
When: 6:30 p.m. Sunday
Where: Acrisure Arena, Palm Desert
TV/radio: Spectrum SportsNet, 710 AM