One of the first tasks Luke Walton has on his hands as head coach of the Los Angeles Lakers is what do to with the starting small forward position. The team drafted Duke forward Brandon Ingram with the No. 2 overall pick in last June’s draft but signed veteran Luol Deng to a four-year, $72 million deal just a couple weeks later. For his part, Walton still doesn’t quite know how the positional battle will play out.
“You can pencil in whoever you want [to the starting lineup], I don’t have anyone penciled in right now,” Walton said on Wednesday when asked if he would commit to Deng as the team’s starting 3 for next season, per Lakers Nation. “Everyone earns his spot. You come into camp, you compete against other players, you respect your teammates, but whoever outplays the next guy in line, that’s who gets to start.”
With Walton being a rookie head coach (his 43 unofficial games at the helm of the Golden State Warriors last season notwithstanding), we still have yet to learn what his philosophy is when it comes to riding veterans versus developing younger guys. Lakers fans will hope that Walton can find the proper balance since that was perhaps the most notorious weakness of his predecessor, Byron Scott.
Right now, there doesn’t appear to be a clear-cut right answer between the two small forwards. The 18-year-old Ingram has the length and the scoring skills to start right away, and is coming off a strong showing in Las Vegas Summer League. But as a one-and-done out of college, he is still quite raw and needs to put on weight to be able to consistently handle NBA-level physicality. Meanwhile, Deng has been a starting 3 for virtually his entire 12-year career and can still be tasked with defending the other team’s top perimeter player. But he’s 31 with significant wear on his wheels, so the Lakers would likely prefer not to play him much more than 30 minutes per game if possible.
What works in the Lakers’ favor is that Deng was converted to a power forward for much of last season with the Miami Heat, which did wonders for the team’s spacing and Deng’s own productivity. Deploying him in the same capacity would give the Lakers the option of playing Ingram and Deng next to one another and going super-small with Julius Randle or even Larry Nance Jr. at the center position. While such miniature lineups would probably marginalize the seven-footers on the roster like Timofey Mozgov and Yi Jianlian (two guys the Lakers gave over $70 million combined to this offseason) as well as rookie Croatian big Ivica Zubac, Walton has a multitude of options to roll with, which is undoubtedly good news for the team.
H/T SB Nation
