There's so much quality young talent on both teams it's really not a stretch to project these two teams to the top of the west in five years.

While the Lakers ooze potential, especially with a godly amount of money coming to add more veterans, Minnesota seems like a pretty sure bet to become a serious contender sooner than later. KAT showed a ton of versatility tonight and he may well redefine his position. Lavine showed off a nice new J. Rubio is about to feast this year.

Far as the Lakers, I saw a a ton of positives. JC is going to come into this season extremely confident and I think it's warranted. I think he's the real deal, I just don't know what his ceiling is. He has a certain amount of Russell Westbrook in his game that intrigues me. He's even got some of that attitude.

Randle was rusty, but that was expected. HIs face up game and drop step is going to be a problem. Taking guys off the dribble from just inside the three point line? He's just got so many tools. Reggie and them are right about his size. He's a goddamned bull right now. He actually lost weight, but he seems to have just added muscle while trimming fat.

Russell is undoubtedly the right pick for this group of guys. He and JC will make for an impressive backcort. There's some overlap but an awful lot of complimentary elements. Guys like Nance and Brown are going to become real NBA players largely due to the duo of Russe and Clarkson.

Oh, and Nance is going to be an instant crowd favorite. I love the kid already. He contests everything on D and he's going to catch an awful lot of lobs. We'll win a few games with his energy alone.


I really like Upshaw's nasty. He'll need to reign it in a bit but every team needs a guy like that. If he shows that kind of moxy against Boogie and Brow he's got a future. Black might well cushion the loss of Ed Davis. I like his size in terms of build, just that Rick Fox low center of gravity build that will help him hold position.

All in all I like what I see in this group. We'll see how things shake out through opening day, but I'm good with just letting these kids take the reigns for a year. If we want to be attractive to top free agents, we need these guys to develop this potential so that we're selling real players.