For the majority of the year, LA’s most recent offseason addition has been injured.

Los Angeles Lakers reserve point guard Gabe Vincent, who’s missed 23 games this season already with a left knee effusion, will finally be returning to the hardwood to face off against the Chicago Bulls.

Head coach Darvin Ham confirmed as much, per Jovan Buha of The Athletic. Ham also revealed, per Buha, that the 6’3″ 3-and-D backup out of UC Santa Barbara would be logging time on a tight minutes restriction, playing somewhere between 14-17 minutes against Chicago.

Across his four contests with LA thus far, Vincent put up a pretty rough stat line, but his perimeter defense kept him on the floor for a good long while in those contests (he averaged 28.3 bench minutes). Vincent holds averages of six points on .393/.071/.500 shooting splits, three assists, and 1.5 steals per bout for the Lakers.

Once he gets a bit more comfortable, one could reasonably expect his output to stabilize significantly on offense. Through 22 games in last year’s playoffs on the Miami Heat, Vincent averaged 12.7 points on .402/.378/.882 shooting splits, 3.5 assists, 1.4 rebounds and 0.9 steals a night. Can he get back to that level in the 2023-24 regular season, playing a reduced role on the bench? We shall see.

Regardless, he’s most critical to LA on the other end of the court anyway, as probably the team’s best point-of-attack defender and one of its two top defensive perimeter threats overall, along with power forward Jarred Vanderbilt, who’s almost missed major time this year already.

Buha adds that Ham seems to relish the prospect of playing Vincent alongside now-fellow bench guard Austin Reaves (who should clearly be starting at the point over D’Angelo Russell, but whatever), and noted that he felt their versatility would give him a “Rubik’s cube” of intriguing rotational options.