Report: Lakers not expected to have players minicamp before training camp
With training camp just one week away, the Lakers appear set to skip their annual player minicamp, often led by LeBron James, this year.
One of the Lakers’ annual traditions since the arrival of LeBron James might be going by the wayside this year.
In nearly every season since LeBron’s arrival in Los Angeles, with a few exceptions, the Lakers have held a players-led minicamp in the week before the start of preseason. The camp has been held in various locations, including Las Vegas the year the team won the title and San Diego last season.
However, barring some sort of big, last-minute change, the Lakers likely will not be having minicamp this season. In his latest newsletter, Dan Woike of the LA Times revealed there are no plans for the camp to continue this season (emphasis added).
LeBron James appeared on Lakers’ social media this week in the team’s weight room, a sign that his post-Olympic reset has come to a close. These kinds of long summers, the one that he and Anthony Davis agreed to in service of country, push everything else back and change offseason plans.
Both players are back in the gym, though things in the upcoming weeks will be a little different. The team, as of now, will not be taking one of the player-led minicamps that it’s done in the past.
The “as of now” is a fair caveat, but Lakers have media day on Monday, Sep. 30 and training camp starts the next day. If they’re having a minicamp, it’s going to be this week or over the weekend at the latest.
As Woike notes, the summer schedule of AD and LeBron probably impacted this. Both of them playing in the Olympics meant they didn’t have their typical rest. Perhaps that led to them not being as eager to head up a players minicamp, too.
To be fair, while it feels like a missed opportunity, there wasn’t really a correlation between that camp leading to success during the regular season or playoffs. I mean, they had one last year and [gestures wildly at regular season].
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