Vogel: Lakers ‘have to be even better’ to repeat as champs
LOS ANGELES (AP) » After the longest season and the shortest offseason in NBA history, the champion Los Angeles Lakers are back at work with two content superstars, a younger lineup around them — and a steady confidence they can do it all again.
The Lakers seem confident and collected as they head into team workouts this weekend, about eight weeks after they finished off the Miami Heat in the NBA Finals on Oct. 11.
A distinct lack of vacation time aside, Los Angeles begins the new season in an apparently stellar position. LeBron James and Anthony Davis extended their commitments to the Lakers earlier this week, and they’ll lead a slightly reconfigured roster that looks even better than last season’s squad with NBA veterans Dennis Schröder, Montrezl Harrell, Marc Gasol and Wesley Matthews.
Before Frank Vogel gets down to the week-to-week challenges of keeping his veterans fresh, navigating travel during a pandemic and taking every opponent’s best shot every night, the Lakers coach laid out a few guiding principles to his players at the team’s training complex in El Segundo.
“We’re going to have to be even better,” Vogel said Friday. “The first thing you have to understand about going into a repeat situation is it’s going to be harder than the year before. The bull’s eye is going to be bigger. We played longer than everybody else and had a shorter offseason than anybody else, so the odds are stacked against us f rom that standpoint. The identity of what and who we were last year has got to be repeated.”
Vogel is referring to the defensive excellence that set apart his Lakers, who created their own tenacious identity in the history of a 17- time champion franchise best known for the flashy offensive exploits of the Showtime 1980s teams and Kobe Bryant’s 21st- century squads.
With Davis leading the way, Los Angeles had the third-best defensive rating (106.1) in the NBA during the last regular season, and the Lakers kept it up in the playoff bubble. The Lakers lost major defensive contributors Avery Bradley and Dwight Howard to free agency, but Davis and Alex Caruso are back along with the four veteran newcomers, who can all excel on both ends.
“The guys that we’ve brought in here are nasty dudes,” Vogel said. “These guys are all physical dudes that have that sort of edge to them that I think they’ll embrace right away. Obviously the group that’s returning knows the value in what we created last year, and hopefully we’ll establish that early on.”