Tag: NBA Walt Disney World

NBA bubble scrimmages, which start this week, will be 40-minute games

Each of the 22 teams will have three scrimmages, which will be 40-minute games rather than the traditional 48-minute NBA game.

In three days, the Los Angeles Lakers will be playing basketball on a screen near you, as they begin their first of three preseason scrimmages prior to their 8 seeding games of the NBA Restart at Walt Disney World. The Lakers don’t expect to have their star players out there in every game, but the games will also be shorter than usual.

Tim Reynolds of the Associated Press reported over the weekend that scrimmages will be 40-minute games, for a variety of reasons, including that some teams don’t have their full rosters available to them.

The NBA is tweaking the rules for those initial matchups, going with 10-minute quarters instead of the usual 12 minutes. The change is for several reasons — among them, not wanting to overly tax players’ bodies after they went more than four months without games, and because some teams do not have their full rosters at Walt Disney World yet because of coronavirus and other issues.

The Lakers are scheduled to face off against the Dallas Mavericks in their first scrimmage on July 23.

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Report: Rajon Rondo suffers broken thumb, will be out 6-8 weeks

The Los Angeles Lakers lost one of their most experienced players for quite a while at the Orlando bubble.

The first few days of practice for the Los Angeles Lakers led to an unfortunate development for the best team in the Western Conference. Rajon Rondo suffered a broken right thumb that will require surgery, according to ESPN’s Malika Andrews and Dave McMenamin. This is a major loss for the Lakers, as Rondo is their most experienced operator at the point guard spot outside of LeBron James.

The Lakers definitely have other options and this is another reason why bringing in J.R. Smith and Dion Waiters was important. The Lakers won’t replace Rondo with a substitute player, especially because they probably hope he can be ready to play again if the Lakers have a deep playoff run, which they are expected to.

In addition to more time for Smith and Waiters, the Lakers will also rely even more now on their other guards, Kentavious Caldwell-Pope and Alex Caruso. Caruso also may get some more time to run the show as the point guard when LeBron needs rest than he did while Rondo was available.

With a smaller traveling coaching staff however, it would not be a surprise to see Rondo be an asset to the coaching staff as he’s often lauded by his teammates for his incredible basketball IQ. While he’s hurt, the respect Rondo carries from his teammates still makes him an important figure for this Lakers group.

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