Your Los Angeles Lakers seem to be doing their darnedest to prep some veterans for, hopefully, the team's second straight win on Friday against another bottom-feeding NBA club, the Detroit Pistons.
To that end, L.A. has sent guards Kendrick Nunn and Dennis Schröder, along with center Thomas Bryant, down to El Segundo to practice with their NBA G League affiliate club, the South Bay Lakers, according to Marc Stein. All three will be practicing and scrimmaging with South Bay today, and will then rejoin the Lakers proper.
Schröder and Bryant have yet to suit up for a 2022-23 regular season game this year, after both players underwent UCL surgeries on their thumbs during the preseason.
After missing the entire 2021-22 season with a bone bruise, Nunn has played sparingly for Los Angeles this year. Nunn has had a smattering solid scoring nights, but his deficiencies on defense have not exactly endeared him to head coach Darvin Ham.
It's been somewhat shocking how ineffective Nunn, ostensibly one of the team's better shooters, has been this season, on a team desperate for floor spacing somewhere, anywhere. On the year, he is averaging a brutal 4.7 points per game on .309/.229/.667 shooting splits, along with 1.5 rebounds and 1.3 dimes. This is all a massive decline from his prior output with the Miami Heat during his first two NBA seasons. He holds career averages of 14.1 points on .452/.358/.877 splits, 2.9 dimes and 2.8 boards.
The 6'2" veteran guard out of the University of Oakland has been a healthy scratch twice, but has been pressed into duty a decent amount lately due to injury-related absences for Patrick Beverley and/or Lonnie Walker IV. In four games of the 11 he's played thus far, he has not managed to score a single point.
Schröder and Bryant are hardly world-beaters, and it remains to be seen how much Ham will actually use an athletic traditional center, seeing how little he has employed the services of Damian Jones to this point in the season. That said, the club could benefit from Schroder's scoring and passing, and he could take minutes from of another non-scoring point guard, current starter Patrick Beverley.
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