This past offseason, the Lakers made an apparent bet on playmaking potency at the expense of their defensive backbone. Saddled with nothing more than a handful of veteran’s minimum contracts to fill out the remainder of the roster with, the Lakers scrounged together a roster of mostly older millennials.
Of that bunch, the one projected to pick up the most defensive slack left hanging by the Lakers’ trio of departures on the wing — Alex Caruso, Kyle Kuzma, and Kentavious Caldwell-Pope — was Trevor Ariza. However, an ankle injury (and subsequent surgery) delayed the 36-year-old’s season debut, before a trip into the health and safety protocols interrupted things further.