LOS ANGELES \u2014 With Sunday marking a full week since their last preseason game, Lakers coach JJ Redick hoped the progress his team made across the team\u2019s four practices would translate onto the game floor at Crypto.com Arena against the Golden State Warriors.<\/p>\n
Better execution with their offensive sets. Creating more scoring chances in transition after playing in the halfcourt too frequently. Being more locked in defensively, especially off the ball.<\/p>\n
The progress from the last week was evident, with the Lakers beating the Warriors 126-116 to pick up their first preseason win.<\/p>\n
The Lakers\u2019 offense hummed in a way it didn\u2019t in its previous two exhibitions.<\/p>\n
Austin Reaves led the team with 21 points on 7-of-10 shooting in 23 minutes. Rui Hachimura (6-of-10 shooting) and Dalton Knecht (4-of-9 shooting), who started, both scored 16 points.<\/p>\n
Deandre Ayton had 14 points, eight rebounds and five assists in 26 minutes, being more involved in the offense than he previously was as the Lakers shot 53.8% from the field (43 of 80), including 44.4% from beyond the 3-point arc (12 of 27).<\/p>\n
The Warriors, who were without Stephen Curry, Jimmy Butler, Al Horford and Moses Moody, were led by Brandin Podziemski\u2019s 23 points and eight assists.<\/p>\n
Reaves left the game midway through the third quarter after a collision with Podziemski during Podziemski\u2019s drive to the basket for a layup. Reaves stayed in the game for a couple more plays before being subbed out, staying on the Lakers\u2019 bench for the remainder of the night after being checked out by team trainers.<\/p>\n
But who wasn\u2019t available for the Lakers on Sunday once again garnered a significant amount of attention.<\/p>\n
Luka Doncic and Marcus Smart were once again sidelined, with Redick saying pregame that he misspoke about the status for Smart, who\u2019s been dealing with Achilles tendinopathy, when he said on Saturday that the 31-year-old guard would be available against the Warriors.<\/p>\n
Redick said the Lakers will \u201ctry\u201d to have Smart available for two of their three remaining preseason games: Tuesday at the Phoenix Suns; Wednesday vs. the Dallas Mavericks in Las Vegas; Friday against the Sacramento Kings to close out their exhibition slate.<\/p>\n
LeBron James, Maxi Kleber and Adou Thiero remained sidelined.<\/p>\n
Redick pushed back when asked pregame if there have been feelings of missed opportunities since camp started because of players being sidelined or being modified participants in practices.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou guys have been really harping on this,\u201d Redick said. \u201cAnd I\u2019m not being combative right now. I want to acknowledge that you guys have, like, last like four days, like it\u2019s becoming a little bit obsessive with all these questions about opportunities lost. So I will answer it again: these are the cards we were dealt. I surely would like everybody to be healthy.\u201d<\/p>\n
When it was mentioned that the Lakers are playing the maximum six preseason games, with the league not having a minimum number of exhibitions that need to be played but most playing fewer than the Lakers, Redick said the team\u2019s preseason slate is something \u201cto be discussed\u201d in conjunction with having more practice time during training camp.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s awesome that we get to play in Palm Springs; it\u2019s awesome we get to play in Vegas,\u201d Redick said. \u201cI recognize there\u2019s Laker fans all over the world that maybe don\u2019t get the chance to see us play. You hope that we can find some sort of balance in the future to get more practice time, less travel time. And I\u2019m sure at some point we\u2019ll be one of the teams going overseas. So then that adds another scenario. So, yeah, you\u2019re just trying to find that balance.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LOS ANGELES \u2014 With Sunday marking a full week since their last preseason game, Lakers coach JJ Redick…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":299063,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[8604,1260,62,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-299062","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nba","8":"tag-lakers","9":"tag-nba","10":"tag-sports","11":"tag-united-states","12":"tag-unitedstates","13":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115365084470578253","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/299062","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=299062"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/299062\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/299063"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=299062"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=299062"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=299062"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}