Thursday marks the third day of the Lakers’ training camp in El Segundo and thanks to NBA.com, anyone was able to watch this live stream online. If you’ve ever been curious as to how practices are run, and what happens in preparation for what you see out on the court, then this broadcast was a must see. I was watching to catch all the action and see how Sasha is fitting into the equation this year; you’ll remember he missed camp last year due to an injury. All of the Lakers were present bright and early at 10 A.M. and finally we got a glimpse of one of the first times everyone has come together since winning the championship last season.

As basketball analysts are prone to do, they had to throw in their two cents and make a couple of bold predictions. First, Reggie Miller proclaimed that he believes the Lakers stand a shot to beat the 1996 record of 72 wins held by the Chicago Bulls. However, he still thought that a healthy Boston Celtics team will get to the Finals and defeat the Lakers in seven games. Respectfully, I must disagree with the latter. While these guys are doing their job and making predictions, practice started behind them.

First, the Lakers and Sasha did some stretches and ran some cross-court exercises. They haven’t touched the basketball yet, it was clearly just a warm-up and the guys appeared to be in good spirits. Then the team moved onto drills using the basketball, running back and forth across the court in a serpentine fashion, stopping short and improving those pull-up jump shots. Sasha’s movements were fluid and he looked really comfortable out on the floor with the other guys. By now, everyone knows that he cut his signature long hair and it looked to be doing him some good. He looked freer out on the floor and wasn’t constantly messing with his headband. As the day progressed, practice got more interesting.

After the first hour, Zen Master and Coach Phil Jackson took a more active role in the training camp. When Phil spoke, the gym was silent and suddenly, everyone was serious business. This is a rather remarkable feat considering all the different personalities and egos on the team. The guys then went through some quick passing drills, and Phil made a point to tell everyone that the quicker they pass the ball, the faster their offense can be run. They also ran a catch-and-shoot exercise, which as well all know is one of Sasha’s specialties. As the NBA TV broadcasters discussed various players, they of course took a moment to mention the situation between Adam Morrison and Sasha Vujacic.

If you’ve been keeping up, then you know Adam has had a great summer in the Summer League, improving his game and versatility as a player. He’s definitely going to be competition for some of the minutes that would usually go to Sasha as they are both shooters. What Sasha does have going for him is that he has more experience than Adam, and he’s a better defensive player. Ideally, we’d like to see Sasha get that shot back to where it was in the Finals in 2008. In the few pre-Eurobasket games that he did play, Sasha was definitely driving into the lane more often, and kicking the ball out to his teammates. If he has the chance to do that on the Lakers this season, it’ll make him just that much more valuable to the team.

It was clear that the first day of the Lakers’ training camp was more mental than anything, as Kobe said towards the end. It was the first time everyone came together in their training facility, and we got to see some exercises and drills as they prepare for the upcoming season. Unfortunately we didn’t get a chance to see any scrimmages, which would have been particularly interesting, but the first pre-season game is coming up on October 7th and we’ll see our Laker team again soon enough.