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The Lakers wrapped up the summer league in Las Vegas on Friday with an 84-78 loss to the Utah Jazz, falling to 1-4, despite having a team of at least seven players under contract that will play for the franchise this upcoming season.
“I think we all expected them to be better, but we all need to understand that they’re still very young and very new to this,” said Coach Byron Scott, who observed the games while assistant coach Mark Madsen ran the summer squad.
“They’ve got a long way to go,” Scott said. “They have a lot of work to do. I’m very happy with the progress they made from game one to game five.”
The Lakers finally saw some brightness after Ohio State guard D’Angelo Russell had a game-high 21 points on 10-of-20 shooting.
“I felt like the same shots I was getting all week, I just kind of capitalized and started making them,” said the team’s No. 2 pick in the 2015 NBA draft.
Russell averaged 11.8 points, 3.2 assists and 5.2 turnovers in the summer league games, shooting 37.7% from the field and 11.8% from three-point range.
When asked, how he viewed his performance throughout the last week, Russell said, “Not good, I know what I’m capable of, and I know the work that we put in before we came here as a team. I don’t feel like we played to our full potential.”
“Let’s make this very clear, Russell is not Magic Johnson,” said Scott. “Magic came on the scene, and instantly he’s a Hall-of-Famer. D’Angelo has a way to go, there’s no doubt about that.
“Sometimes when you come out here and you’re the No. 1, No. 2 or No. 3 pick, you expect to come out here and tear the league up,” he continued. “When guys kind of eat your lunch every now in then, it brings you back down to earth and lets you know that you still have a long way to go. In the long run, this might be the best thing that ever happened to him.”