There were many distinctions on display when the Lakers faced off against the Warriors in the season opener, but the most glaring one was seeing a team with nine newcomers facing off against a group whose three-man core has been together for a decade.
Sure, Golden State was working in a few newcomers like Donte DiVincenzo and JaMychal Green, but that team’s system has been in place since Steve Kerr arrived in 2014. There’s an institutional knowledge and familiarity that no other team in the league possesses, certainly not a Lakers squad with a new head coach and mostly new rotation still playing its first minutes together.