Burning Camp Question 7: Who is the Lakers' 12th man?

October 7th, 2009, 7:53 am ·


kevmug2007-croppedQ: What are the chances Adam Morrison gets on the active roster more often this season than DJ Mbenga?

A: 83 percent.

Phil Jackson threw some praise Morrison's way Tuesday when asked about his training camp. Meanwhile, DJ Mbenga has been limited by a complicated hip injury. Ultimately it will always comes down to matchups and you'd want to load up with another huge body in Mbenga if the opposition had a big, scary center ... except there really aren't many of those anymore.

Yao Ming is hurt, Shaquille O'Neal left the West for the East and even Tim Duncan has dropped weight to save his knees and is just 240 pounds now. (For comparison, Ron Artest is 260 pounds.) It's not as if someone such as Greg Oden is going to make you worry about gearing your defensive game plan for him.

What a further coup it would be for Mitch Kupchak to meet his secondary goal of making Morrison a rotation player this season after Shannon Brown has already helped. They came over with him in the salary dump of flaky Vladimir Radmanovic, and the Lakers won the NBA championship without Radmanovic around.

Morrison has talent -- don't be mistaken and think he's a stiff -- and could be a great fit in the triangle offense, nailing open jumpers. Artest could play some power forward to make room for him, but Morrison will have to improve his defense to take actual minutes away from Luke Walton, Josh Powell or even Sasha Vujacic and Brown.

Morrison has extra motivation in that this is the last year he's under contract -- no one is going to pick up the team option for 2010-11 for $6.9 million, sorry -- so he's singing for his supper. (He hilariously had this answer Monday in doing one of those colorful survey questionnaires for the team's P.R. department: The question was what meal he is best at making. He fired his answer without hesitation: "Toast." When Lakers PR honcho John Black stopped laughing, he questioned whether toast was a meal, so Morrison countered with a second choice: "Easy Mac.")

At the very least, Morrison should be the 12th man ahead of Mbenga more often than not ... which must be a goal of Morrison's from the sheer standpoint of avoiding squeezing himself uncomfortably into the dressy clothes he's rather avoid as an inactive player on the bench for games.


Posted in : Polls   D.J. Mbenga   Adam Morrison  

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