Los Angeles Lakers: How Frank Vogel should divvy up the bench minutes
By Jason Reed
Los Angeles Lakers head coach Frank Vogel has a deep roster and is going to have to have a fun task at hand in balancing the minutes and rotations.
The Los Angeles Lakers have a deep-enough roster that can get through the trials and tribulations of an 82-game NBA season. In order to get that, teams should aim for a 10, or even an 11, man rotation. Once the playoffs hit, we often see teams run with eight-man rotations, throwing their eight-best guys out there for the entire game.
We won’t see that much in the regular season as it will run the starters into the ground. Managing the minutes and setting up proper rotations is one of the hardest tasks of being a head coach and is something that is tried and tested throughout the year.
While we cannot give an in-depth look into Frank Vogel’s mind, we can predict how the head coach is going to use his 240 minutes, including how many minutes the guys are getting off the bench.
We are establishing a starting lineup of Rajon Rondo, Danny Green, LeBron James, Anthony Davis and JaVale McGee with 137 total minutes as our foundation. From there, this is how we think the Lakers ought to divvy up the bench minutes.
6. Kyle Kuzma: 26 minutes
Kyle Kuzma is transitioning to a bench role this year with the arrival of Anthony Davis as Davis is insistent in playing the four and not playing center. If the team had no center depth than Davis would be the starting five and Kuzma the starting four, instead, Kuzma is on the bench.
This is not a demotion in the slightest as Kuzma is going to blossom into one of the best sixth-men in the entire league. He has quite the competition across the hall in Lou Williams and he should hold himself to that high of a standard.
Granted, they are completely different players, but Kuzma can have the kind of impact that Williams has one the Clippers.
This was a complete accident (I did not check this beforehand) but Williams averaged 26.6 minutes for the Clippers last. With a deep rotation, Kuzma will average right around the same and should strive for at least 16 points and five rebounds per game.