LOS ANGELES -- First-year Los Angeles Lakers head coach Luke Walton and his staff first saw signs during the preseason, when they were still tinkering with their inaugural lineup, searching for player combinations that might work best. As much as they experimented, they noticed how the second unit kept playing together exceptionally well, how the respective skill sets of those players seamlessly meshed together, how it formed an especially strong chemistry, how, almost always, that unit seemed to give the Lakers a better-than-expected punch upon entering the game.
“We got to the point where the bench was becoming pretty special,” Walton recalled Sunday.