Los Angeles Lakers: Rotational fallout after suspensions

The Los Angeles Lakers will be without two starters for the week, leading to a brief reshuffling of the rotation that will give the team a new look.

The home opener for the 2018-19 Los Angeles Lakers had as much pregame hype for a singular October basketball game since Kevin Durant’s debut with the Golden State Warriors in 2016. LeBron James advertisements were everywhere, broadcast networks had “LeBron’s home debut with Lakers” on the bottom of the screen for days and their opponent, the Houston Rockets, was a game away from defeating the Warriors dynasty last postseason.

It’s rare that a regular season game can live up to this much hype, but this one did. It was a back-and-forth affair that the Rockets won, 124-115, and then Brandon Ingram shoved James Harden after the latter caused a foul call on Ingram, something not expected from the usually mild mannered Laker.

This resulted in SpitGate, where a decade’s worth of animosity boiled over as Rajon Rondo allegedly spit on Chris Paul, prompting Paul to put his finger in Rondo’s face. This led to Rondo landing a clean left hook on Paul and more punches being thrown. Ingram came in swinging, literally, and tried to land a punch or two of his own. In the end, Lance Stephenson was playing peacemaker, putting a cap on a crazy couple of minutes in the Staples Center.

All three players were ejected from the game and received suspensions. Ingram will sit out four games, Rondo will miss three and CP3 in total will miss two games. Each length is fair, though it was kind of surprising to see only four games for Ingram since he incited the confrontations and then threw a punch, but there are rotational fallouts for the Lakers missing two starters this week.

The good news is the Lakers’ schedule eases up this week, with the San Antonio Spurs, Phoenix Suns, Denver Nuggets and Spurs again on deck. Here’s how the Lakers can cope with the loss of Ingram and Rondo for these games.