Lakers to open training camp with recently signed Sun Yue sidelined

LOS ANGELES, Sept. 30 (Xinhua) -- The Los Angeles Lakers will begin their training camp with recently signed guard Sun Yue sidelined indefinitely because of mononucleosis, the team said on Tuesday.

A doctor's appointment planned for Monday was rescheduled for Tuesday because of a high fever, according to John Black, the team's executive vice president of public relations.

The Lakers drafted the 6-foot-9 Sun, a member of China's national team, in the second round of the 2007 NBA Draft and signed him to a two-year contract on Aug. 25.

The Lakers will practice twice daily through Sunday and once on Monday, then begin exhibition play Tuesday against the Utah Jazz at Anaheim's Honda Center in Los Angeles. They will play their two exhibition games at Staples Center in downtown Los Angeles Oct. 18-19.

They will open the regular season Oct. 28 against the Portland Trail Blazers at Staples Center.

"We're the favorites for a reason," Kobe Bryant, the NBA's Most Valuable Player Award winner for the 2007-2008, said.

"That's one of the things I tell the guys... We've got all the tools here, we've got all the pieces to the puzzle, now it's on us to do the work. If we do that work, we should win it."

Jackson's designation stems in large measure from the team's reconstituted front line.

Andrew Bynum will return as the starting center after missing the final 46 games of the 2007-2008 regular season and all of the playoffs because of a knee injury that eventually required surgery.

Pau Gasol, the starting center after Bynum's injury, will move to power forward, and Lamar Odom will shift from power forward to small forward.

Gasol, acquired in a trade after Bynum's injury, has never played with Bynum.

Gasol will spend some time at center when Bynum is on the bench and Odom will also play some at power forward.

"We have to figure some things out before we'll know we're going to go in the regular season," Jackson said. "We need some answers. We probably won't have them all until the first couple weeks of the season."

In an interview Monday, Bynum pronounced himself "100 percent" recovered from the knee surgery. However, Jackson said Bynum needs to regain the necessary stamina.

"(He) has lost the edge of how to play continual basketball from A to Z," Jackson said. "He's still just in the playground stage here. We'll see if he can get to that level where you compete every moment you're on the court."

The Lakers "were probably a year ahead of schedule" in reaching last season's NBA Finals, where they lost to the Boston Celtics, four games to two, but "we jelled well at the end of the season and played up to a potential that was higher than I expected," Jackson said.

A goal for this season is "not to be complacent and come back and have that same desire," Jackson said.

The 2008-2009 Lakers will "be deeper, a little bit quicker, we're going to be bigger as a basketball team," Jackson said. "There's a lot of things that's going to give us that tensile strength that we lacked in the sixth game where they took the game away from us right from the start," referring to a 131-92 loss in the final game.