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One of the earliest moves the Los Angeles Lakers did in free agency was to waive veteran guard Quinn Cook. He didn’t play a lot of minutes this past season and seemed expendable. Cook was in the news recently as LeBron James suggested that the team could bring him back.
Well, it appears the superstar got his wish as the Lakers announced that they are bringing back Cook.
Cook has been part of two of the last three championship teams and while he won’t play much, he brings a level of leadership to the team. He also should be one of the Lakers’ better 3-point shooters. It is interesting the team is deciding to bring him back after cutting him. He wasn’t making a ton of money before. Perhaps they realized that they still had some room on the roster and decided that they’d like to bring back a familiar face instead of looking elsewhere.
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Frank Vogel Believes Lakers Will Need to Be Better to Repeat
The Lakers are the reigning champions and everybody in the NBA is going to be gunning for them. There’s no element of surprise with this team. They’re the favorites to win it all again and everybody knows it. Head coach Frank Vogel believes that this season could be even harder for the team.
“We’re going to have to be even better,” Vogel said Friday. “The first thing you have to understand about going into a repeat situation is it’s going to be harder than the year before. The bull’s eye is going to be bigger. We played longer than everybody else and had a shorter offseason than anybody else, so the odds are stacked against us from that standpoint. The identity of what and who we were last year has got to be repeated.”
The Lakers have done a great job this offseason of trying to improve the roster instead of just being content with what they won with in the past.
Vogel Calls New Players ‘Nasty Dudes’
One thing that made the Lakers so good last season is that their roster was filled with hungry veterans who were all about winning. While they did lose some of those guys, they replaced them with young guys who play with a lot of passion like Montrezl Harrell and Dennis Schroder.
“The guys that we’ve brought in here are nasty dudes,” Vogel said. “These guys are all physical dudes that have that sort of edge to them that I think they’ll embrace right away. Obviously, the group that’s returning knows the value in what we created last year, and hopefully, we’ll establish that early on.”
The Lakers also got younger this offseason, which is good considering the shortened break before the start of the season. The losses of players like Rajon Rondo and Avery Bradley do hurt a bit but it’s hard to say the Lakers didn’t get better this offseason. They’ve kept enough continuity while improving in a number of areas.
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