Los Angeles Lakers: Three things to watch for in preseason opener

1. How LeBron at point guard and Davis at center plays out

One of the biggest storylines surrounding the Los Angeles Lakers this past week was the crunchtime lineup that Frank Vogel threw out in practice. LeBron and Davis were obviously part of it but it was the roles and the players around them that were shocking.

First of all, on the “starters” side of things was Alex Caruso, Kentavious-Caldwell-Pope and Avery Bradley. Those likely won’t be the guys on the court in crunch time of the regular season as Danny Green was brought in for this reason and Kyle Kuzma will be healthy. One of those three may make the cut.

The bigger takeaway was that LeBron was playing point guard and Davis was playing center. Davis was adamant about preferring the four this offseason and while there were rumblings of LeBron playing point, it still took a lot of fans by surprise.

It definitely is a different outlook and is one that we will probably only see in the crunch time of games. After testing it in practice, I can almost guarantee that Vogel will throw it out at some point in this game.

I doubt it comes in the true crunchtime minutes of this game as LeBron and Davis will have a limited workload but it would not be all that surprising to see it deployed at the end of the first half, giving us our first game-time feel LeBron and Davis’ potential roles at the end of the game.