One of the Lakers’ annual traditions since the arrival of LeBron James might be going by the wayside this year.
In nearly every season since LeBron’s arrival in Los Angeles, with a few exceptions, the Lakers have held a players-led minicamp in the week before the start of preseason. The camp has been held in various locations, including Las Vegas the year the team won the title and San Diego last season.
However, barring some sort of big, last-minute change, the Lakers likely will not be having minicamp this season. In his latest newsletter, Dan Woike of the LA Times revealed there are no plans for the camp to continue this season (emphasis added).
The “as of now” is a fair caveat, but Lakers have media day on Monday, Sep. 30 and training camp starts the next day. If they’re having a minicamp, it’s going to be this week or over the weekend at the latest.
As Woike notes, the summer schedule of AD and LeBron probably impacted this. Both of them playing in the Olympics meant they didn’t have their typical rest. Perhaps that led to them not being as eager to head up a players minicamp, too.
To be fair, while it feels like a missed opportunity, there wasn’t really a correlation between that camp leading to success during the regular season or playoffs. I mean, they had one last year and [gestures wildly at regular season].
