News, notes and observations from an interesting first week of NBA training camp … 

James, who just turned 20, is the most scrutinized second-round draft pick ever. The reality is James needs to spend the bulk of this season in the G League getting reps—we can’t forget that James is little over a year removed from a near tragic cardiac event and spent most of his lone season at USC working his way back into playing condition—and figuring out how to be a point guard. The Lakers get that, and as cool as it was to see two Jameses share the floor Sunday, expect to see Bronny suiting up for South Bay for most of this season. 

“You got to know who you are first because our identity for so long is just the game of basketball,” Oden says. “Honestly, it was very scary. One of the big things that I had to do was actually figure out myself. I was a part of basketball since the third grade and never really knew my own identity outside of basketball. And so the first thing I had to do was ask myself, ‘What do you even enjoy outside of this game?’ I went back to school, just tried to finish my degree. It’s something I promised my mom I would do. I’m thankful to Coach Matta [to] get me back around the game and given me a space where I felt comfortable to go back to school and finish my degree.”

The question is Julius Randle. Reid and Rudy Gobert have strong chemistry and Reid’s three-point shooting makes it easy for him to plug-and-play into the slot vacated by Karl-Anthony Towns. Randle? His grind-it-out, paint-heavy style seems like a curious fit alongside Gobert, and he isn’t the kind of pick-and-roll partner Anthony Edwards has grown used to. 

“There will be a pretty good learning curve,” Timberwolves coach Chris Finch says. “I’m pretty confident that there’s going to be rough edges that we’re going to have to smooth out. We’re working hard in the moments that we have had them, which haven’t been much so far, like develop fast chemistry between Anthony and Julius. That’s going to be really important. But they seem to be enjoying working together right now.”

While Minnesota loses something with Towns’s departure, Finch believes there are new things they can do with Randle in the rotation. 

“To have skilled bigs is such a weapon,” Finch says. “I think the game is really trended that way, so we’re fortunate to have as many skilled bigs as we did. You can put the ball in his hands and run pick-and-roll with him like we did with KAT. You can post him like we did with KAT. Obviously, KAT’s shooting is better than Julius’s, but Julius has shown the ability to make threes at a high level. I think Julius is better in transition as a rebound, dribble [and] push guy can really create, give us another playmaker there, which at times we desperately need. Until we get consistent backup point guard presence, we can rely on Julius, like we relied on Kyle Anderson.”

Come on. Look, Leonard’s issues with his left knee are brutal. At the midway point of last season he was on a short list of MVP candidates. But the knee has been a problem for years, and five-plus months after it cut short another season, it is still giving him issues. Any significant absence by Leonard means the Clippers will have to lean on 35-year-old James Harden and the smorgasbord of talent they stitched together after Paul George’s exit. L.A. won 51 games last season. This year feels like one where they will be lucky to finish in the back half of the play-in tournament.