Heading into Tuesday’s game against the Utah Jazz, the Los Angeles Lakers face the chance of starting 0-3 for the 1st time since the 1978-79 season. While Lakers coach Mike Brown isn’t happy about the results, he remains optimistic. Football scores

“We’re still feeling our way,” Brown claimed following the team’s shoot around Tuesday afternoon. “It’s tough to swallow, but we’ll be fine.”

After the Jazz leave town, the Lakers will play 6 opponents widely predicted to test for playoff spots over the following 7 games. Brown acknowledged the chance of starting slowly in this year’s compressed 66-game NBA season but isn’t nervous about the team’s long-term prospects. Baseball scores

“Obviously you don’t want to put yourself in a hole, but we’re going to be in the playoffs,” he revealed. “Where we are going to sit, I don’t know. Hopefully we do not bury ourselves too deep at the start of the year, but when we get clicking … We’re going to be really good, and once we’re able to the playoffs this is an experienced, vet team.”

“We require the No. 1 seed overall, but with this group here, I’m not frightened to play in anybody’s gym.”

While Utah makes its season debut in Tuesday night’s game, the Lakers are polishing off the last leg of their lone back-to-back-to-back sequence this year, and will again be without the postponed Andrew Bynum. Still, Brown asserts he won’t place any restrictions on his players regarding their minutes.

“Especially early in the season, I’m OK with the minutes that we’re playing,” he revealed.

Instead, Brown is having a look at his team’s workload away from games.

“I just have to do a more satisfactory job personally of making sure I don’t keep the men too long every day. I have kept them in the flick room and the gymnasium a bit, and I haven’t given them a day off yet since training camp started,” Brown related. “It’s a fine line. This group is psychologically tough, and right now they’re showing it to me by coming in and putting their hard hat on and going to work, whether or not it’s shoot around or practice or the game.”

The Lakers spent the morning watching film of their loss Monday in Sacramento, and after Brown claimed he found more positives in the tape than he was expecting, he noted challenges in the team’s current learning process, typified by examples in which players fell back to older schemes practiced by the previous staff.

In a nutshell, there is still de-programming going on both offensively and defensively.

“After watching the tape, yes, it was fairly evident,” Brown said.

Asked when he suspected his group might all be on the same page, Brown smiled. “Hopefully it does not take too long,” he announced.