LeBron James and his Los Angeles Lakers claimed their first victory of the new season as the team beat the Utah Jazz 95-86 at the Staples Center on Friday. Meanwhile, the young New Orleans Pelicans suffered their second straight loss after being defeated by the Dallas Mavericks 123-116 at the Smoothie King Center.

Lakers achieve more than victory

Both the Lakers and the Jazz carried a lot of expectations, some even not so realistic, starting the 2019-20 season after the nice work than by their front offices this summer. However, both had to deal with some thorny problems before finding the best chemistry for their franchises. Let's start with the Lakers.

The purple and gold lied with their offense. Their best playmaker LeBron James relies on assaulting the rim with his game; their best finisher Anthony Davis can not cover the 3-point line with his shooting rang. However, as Davis does not want to play center, the Lakers will have to add another big guy – currently JaVale McGee – to the starting-lineup.

Such arrangements were not helping the team's crowded space on the court and that meant the Lakers had to rely on fast break led by defense and second-chance scoring led by offensive rebounds. They did well in this area on Friday, thanks to the efforts of Dwight Howard. Leading 11-3 in offensive rebounds and 9-2 in blocks, the Lakers scored 11 more second-chance points (15-4).

Of course, this alone was not enough to defeat Utah. The other secret behind LA's win was that they found their kill squad or at least part of it in the third quarter. The formation went as following: Davis in center, James in power forward plus three shooters. The merit of the squad was that when three shooters spread along the 3-point line, Utah could not stop the pick-and-roll plays between James and Davis in spite of the league's top defense of theirs.

It will take way more than two games to figure out the best game solutions for the Lakers, but Friday's win was at least a beginning. Besides, nothing can be more helpful to convince Davis to move to center than victories.

Utah needs time to adapt to new things

After one win and one loss, the Jazz had two puzzles to work on. The first one was how to integrate Mike Conley with the team's system.

What Conley does better than his predecessor Ricky Rubio are individual attacks and steadier shooting. Nonetheless, the Jazz had been relying on a system offensively that was built on the playstyle of Rubio. Unfortunately, Conley did not share that playstyle.

One example should help you understand the difference: Before the 2019-20 season, Rubio started Utah's offense by calling screen by the team's big man and the most likely move he would take after that was to pass the ball to the teammate in the opposite corner, which explained what an important role corner 3-pointers played in the team's offense.

By contrast, Conley also liked to screen by big men but was not able to make the corner-to-corner pass because of his smaller size. Instead, he was used to either finishing the offense with a floater or giving the ball to the big men who would decide the next step. The problem is, Utah's center Rudy Gobert, unlike Marc Gasol, is never an orchestrator. What he does best is to finish.

This led to the second puzzle the Jazz face. To maximize Conley's power, coach Quin Snyder asked his players to play faster and try more early offense. That's why you could see that the Jazz, which used to pass the most in the league, often took the shot after one or two passes in Friday's game. By the way, it did end well for them, which could be seen from the 22 turnovers they committed and the 41.43 percent of field goal rate.

It will understandably take time for player sand teams to get used to each other, and that's why coach Snyder was willing to wait for Conley to figure out what to do and how to do it. Just one little reminder, time is usually more limited for anyone in the wild Western Conference.

Other games on Friday included (home teams in bold):

Toronto Raptors 106-112 Boston Celtics

Minnesota Timberwolves 121-99 Charlotte Hornets

New York Knicks 109-113 Brooklyn Nets

Chicago Bulls 110-1102 Memphis Grizzlies

Dallas Mavericks 123-116 New Orleans Pelicans

Washington Wizards 97-85 Oklahoma City Thunder

Phoenix Suns 107-108 Denver Nuggets

Portland Trail Blazers 122-112 Sacramento Kings