With his second consecutive impressive preseason performance on Sunday, second-year Lakers guard Talen Horton-Tucker is making a strong case to be part of the team’s regular season rotation, as ESPN’s Dave McMenamin writes.
“It’s going to make my job difficult for sure,” head coach Frank Vogel said when asked about finding a role for Horton-Tucker, who poured in 33 points in Sunday’s win to go along with 10 rebounds, four assists, and four steals.
“We have a very deep team. No minutes are guaranteed,” Vogel added. “He’s going to keep playing at a high level, and that should push everybody else to stay playing at a high level. It does give us that luxury of having him carry the load some for some of our guys who played deep in the championship run last year and had a short offseason.”
Even if the Lakers stay relatively healthy this season, the club should prioritize finding regular minutes for Horton-Tucker, according to Kevin O’Connor of The Ringer, who says the franchise will need to develop young talent if it wants to remain a title contender for years to come
Here’s more on the NBA’s two Los Angeles-based teams:
- Lakers superstars LeBron James and Anthony Davis didn’t play at all during the team’s first two preseason contests, but they’ll both be “ready to go” when the regular season gets underway next week, according to Vogel (link via Broderick Turner of The Los Angeles Times).
- Both the Lakers and Clippers were missing players on Sunday due to “excused absences” believed to be related to the NBA’s coronavirus protocols, writes Andrew Greif of The Los Angeles Times. Those absences may be related to inconclusive tests or contact tracing, so they don’t necessarily mean the individual tested positive for COVID-19, according to Greif, who notes that the Lakers were without Kostas Antetokounmpo and Devontae Cacok, while the Clippers were missing Reggie Jackson and assistant coach Chauncey Billups.
- Although Terance Mann has seen some time at shooting guard and small forward, the Clippers view the 24-year-old as a point guard and expect him to be a key contributor off the bench, as Mirjam Swanson of The Orange County Register writes.
just give talen some minutes and let him go. he’s a monster and will only get better.
To be fair,Reggie is a 2 sport athlete.
I could see THT getting big mins in certain matchups then maybe a DNP the next game-
I like that tho for this year, he’s a weapon for Vogel not a project this year. Next year we could damn well be talking about him cracking the starting 5 come this time
Wow you know acronyms…were all SOoo impressed. Lakers bench needs all the help they can get…they’ll be playing a lot with load management happening. U can bet on that.
Thanks LD …..Yes you can count on a fair bit of LM this year which I consider a boon rather than a pitfall for these Lakers-
Lakers fans have always loved their bench bros and THT will be the next fan fav out here for years to come
I hope he wont get traded especially if his stock rises!