We’re slowly inching towards knocking on the door of the 2020-21 NBA regular season, as teams will start camp activities tomorrow ahead of preseason games starting on December 11th. Although it feels like it just left, the NBA is back and the reigning champion Lakers will be looking to defend the title. To do so, the team surrounded LeBron James and Anthony Davis with many new players including Montrezl Harrell who the Lakers took from the Clippers.
Spectrum SportsNet released a preview of a special edition of the Road Trippin’ podcast, as Allie Clifton and Richard Jefferson sat down with LeBron James that will air tomorrow evening at 8:00 p.m. PST. LeBron mostly gets to have fun with the discussion around his new teammates (with a very funny conversation surrounding Marc Gasol at the beginning of the video below), but also gets to talking about what the players bring to the team. In regards to Harrell, LeBron had some interesting comments in regards to what he can do for the Lakers.
“We got Trezz, Sixth Man of the Year award winner, who’s going to help our bench, which we struggled with this past year. You know, keeping that up. And then we have the runner-up Sixth Man of the Year award in Dennis Schröder.”
"@MarcGasol has my Defensive POY trophy at his house but that's not here or there." 😂 @KingJames talks about his new teammates on tomorrow night's @RoadTrippinPod at 8 PM on Spectrum SportsNet. 🍷 @RealAClifton @Rjeff24 pic.twitter.com/6dg4hCUFN7
— Spectrum SportsNet (@SpectrumSN) December 1, 2020
(The quote begins at the 1:19 mark of the video but be sure to watch his previous remarks about the Clippers players being shocked about the signings on Twitter)
The quote is interesting for a few reasons. One, for the reason that LeBron James implies here that he expects Trezz to come off the bench. Two, LeBron says that Harrell will be helping a bench that “struggled” last year, a bench that is returning key players such as Alex Caruso, Kyle Kuzma, as well as Markieff Morris even if he didn’t play long with the team. Now although those three may get hurt by LeBron’s comments, he isn’t wrong as many Lakers games would include scoring bursts from opposing teams as The King left the court. Even with Anthony Davis leading the four other players, sometimes the other team was just able to capitalize without LeBron on the court.
Although Schröder claims he will be starting, Harrell and he should help the offense in lineups where LeBron is off the floor from their one-on-one, rim attacking abilities. LeBron obviously recognizes this.
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