LA-Bron: First impressions of the new-look Lakers

LeBron James played his first regular-season contest with the Lakers on Thursday, kicking off the latest chapter in his peerlessly fascinating career. It arrived with all of the hype and intrigue of James' previous new-team debuts, and it ended the way each of the first three did: with a loss. The Lakers fell to the Portland Trail Blazers 128-119 in a wildly entertaining affair.

The Lakers had a puzzling offseason outside of the LeBron signing, assembling an unconventional roster around their new face of the franchise. The additions raised a ton of questions about how the team's pieces would fit together. We obviously won't be able to sufficiently answer those questions until we have a much larger sample size to work with, but here's a look at how King James and his new royal entourage looked in Game 1.

LeBron himself

James has made a habit of having what he terms "feel-out games," where he's not necessarily looking to assert himself so much as he's trying to assess the situation, take the temperature of the team around him, and determine what he's up against.

Thursday didn't start out looking like one of those games for James, who scored his first two baskets as a Laker on monstrous dunks and amassed 13 points in his first nine minutes. But, as the game wore on, he took more of a backseat, either focusing on facilitating or sitting out possessions altogether while Rajon Rondo or Brandon Ingram ran the offense.

James got 37 frontcourt touches in the game, which was not far off the 42.5 he averaged last year with the Cavs. But it was the time of possession that painted a complete picture: He averaged just 3.22 seconds per touch and spent just four total minutes with the ball in his hands. Last year he averaged 4.64 seconds per touch and nearly seven minutes of possession per game. Although these numbers supported his edict that he wanted to spend more time playing off-ball this season, they were also the result of an approach that bordered on passive, particularly in the second half.

Naturally, James still finished with a gaudy stat line of 26 points, 12 rebounds, and six assists, because he remains extremely good.

Pushing the pace

James' teams have almost always played slowly, but this year's Lakers have been adamant that they want to run, and they were true to their word in the opener. This game was played at a blistering 113-possession pace. For reference, last year's fastest team averaged 101.6 possessions per game.

The Lakers were obviously going to run off of misses and live-ball turnovers, but they're going to try running off of makes, too. Look no further than the way Los Angeles pushed the pace in getting James one of his two transition dunks early in the first quarter.

(Courtesy: TNT)

All told, the Lakers scored an absurd 34 fast-break points in the game, which allowed them to keep pace with Portland despite their stagnant halfcourt offense and clanky shooting. Speaking of which ...

The shooting

Perhaps the biggest knock on the Lakers' front office this past offseason was that it neglected the most basic tenet of LeBron-centric roster-building: Surround the dude with shooters. The team's first game did little to assuage concerns about such deficiencies. The Lakers shot 7-of-30 from 3-point range after missing their first 15 attempts from deep. They shot an almost unthinkable 11-of-45 from outside the restricted area, rendering their impressive 70 paint points moot.

They might not shoot that poorly again all season, but the shooting itself is only part of the issue; the ripple effects of playing multiple non-shooters with James can be equally damaging. Here's Evan Turner swooping in to bust up a LeBron-Lonzo Ball backdoor alley-oop while completely ignoring his man, the bricky Lance Stephenson, cutting to the corner.

(Courtesy: TNT)

That would've been a nice play design had there been a player with any measure of gravity in Stephenson's place. (Side note: Lance had a brutal first game, and continues to look like a particularly poor fit on this roster.)

Even on last year's broken-down, dysfunctional Cavs team, James was surrounded by spot-up threats who demanded defensive attention. Though his magical passing can make up for a lot, he's most devastating when defenses are forced to choose between multiple bad options as he surveys the floor. But cheating off the likes of Stephenson, Ball, and Rondo while James has the ball is a good option.

Small-ball lineups

Another flaw in the Lakers' roster construction appears to be their lack of viable big men. JaVale McGee is the team's only traditional center, and he hasn't averaged more than 11 minutes per game in five years. That means the Lakers are going to be playing a ton of small ball, most often with the 6-foot-9 Kyle Kuzma as their de facto five.

The Kuzma-at-center look got off to a promising start in the first quarter, as the sophomore stopped Jusuf Nurkic in the post, burned him at the other end with a cut and up-fake under the basket, then got fouled by Nurkic's replacement Zach Collins while shooting a three. But the good times didn't last. The Lakers wound up having to send help in the post, and that led to open looks on the perimeter, namely for Nik Stauskas, who torched them. Kuzma's inability to protect the rim was also exposed. While the team's 48.1 percent rebound rate with him at the five was far from disastrous, their 121 defensive rating certainly was. (With McGee on the floor, it was an even 100.)

That said, certain small-ball configurations should work better than others. One such look in Thursday's game featured Kuzma, James, Ingram, Ball, and Josh Hart (who was probably the Lakers' second-best player on the night). That lineup had enough length and speed to help and recover, and also the ability to switch across multiple positions. This was the first of two straight possessions in which the Lakers forced a turnover and then took the ball the other way for a pick-6.

(Courtesy: TNT)

The lineup only saw two minutes of run, but it deserves another look.

Who fit next to LeBron?

Figuring out who best complements James will be a season-long project for the Lakers, but a few candidates emerged in this contest.

McGee acquitted himself quite well, following up a strong preseason with 22 energetic minutes in the opener. His ability to screen, protect the rim, and run the floor should make him a valuable piece going forward.

Sixteen of McGee's minutes came with James on the floor, and while the Lakers didn't score well in those minutes, they posted an 85.4 defensive rating.

Rondo was also surprisingly effective playing alongside James, and it's clear the two passing geniuses are going to develop a mind-meld that helps compensate for the spacing they'll be sacrificing.

(Courtesy: TNT)

Ingram looks like a natural fit, but he could also probably stand to see more time as a primary playmaker in the LeBron-less lineups that will struggle to create offense this season. Hart, as mentioned, was terrific on both ends, and unlike Rondo, can actually offer some off-ball gravity to open the floor up a bit. He has a strong case to jump into the starting lineup in place of Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, who had a 5.7 percent usage rate in 27 minutes, which frankly seems impossible.

This was also a bit of a troubling debut for Ball, who drifted and blended into the scenery when he and James shared the floor. He got just eight frontcourt touches in 19 minutes of action (having to create two of them on his own with offensive rebounds), and dished out just one assist. Ball is coming off an arthroscopic knee surgery that cost him a chunk of training camp and preseason, so this may have been the result of him getting settled and shaking off some cobwebs. There's still reason to believe that this partnership can work long term.