Lakers return home after a week of implementing Luke Walton’s vision

A sluggish start to Sunday’s practice at UC Santa Barbara might have drawn the head coach’s ire, but after the Lakers staff brought the team together to reset, a group of young players took over.

Second-year point guard D’Angelo Russell, third-year forward Julius Randle and even second-year forward Larry Nance Jr. led the charge to change the atmosphere at practice.

“It was great,” Coach Luke Walton said. “You want the players policing themselves. You want them being the ones to do it. Now if no one does it then the coach needs to get in there. It happens, but it was nice to see the players step in and do that today.”

With that practice, the Lakers concluded training camp after six days in Santa Barbara as their first-year head coach implemented his vision for the team. They came out healthy, and closer than they entered. They spent eight practices learning Walton’s way, and bonded through off-the-court activities at night.

Now the Lakers return to El Segundo to continue their work, with exhibition games starting Tuesday.

“We’re excited to play the games, but the mind-set is we’re preparing for the regular season,” Walton said. “We’re preparing for getting all this stuff in by then. We’re not going to slow down what we’re doing in practice because we have a preseason game coming up. It’ll be more of a game-day routine with shootaround and this and that, but we’ll still get after it tomorrow.”

The coaching staff spent most of the week teaching. The Lakers focused on fundamentals and drills to hone them. There was time to scrimmage, but not nearly as much as Walton prefers. With a young team and one filled with new players, Walton didn’t feel comfortable skimping on teaching.

There were two days during which the Lakers had two practices each, and on both of those days the night practice allowed for more scrimmaging. Conscious of players’ fatigue, Walton often altered the schedule to get the most out of the sessions.

“It’s important to be like this because we gotta be 100% to be the best,” point guard Marcelo Huertas said. “Like he said before training camp, it doesn’t matter if we’re here four hours or three hours, as long as we have quality in what we’re doing. We just can’t be out here killing time to say we practiced for three hours if our legs and our minds are too tired to get what he wants from us.”

The team-building went beyond the court.

On Thursday night, the rookies were made to sing songs chosen by veterans — with first-round pick Brandon Ingram in a poodle suit. According to guard Jordan Clarkson, that poodle suit aligned with Ingram’s nickname: Tiny Dog.

On Friday night the Lakers had a team dinner, and Saturday night they all went bowling.

“Lou [Williams], Jose [Calderon], Anthony Brown and Travis Wear [won],” Russell said. “They beat the coaches in the championship. Me, Julius, Brandon and [Timofey] Mozgov, we came in third or fourth. We lost to the coaches. Mozgov said the ball was too small. He was like, ‘I hate bowling, man.’”

This isn’t Walton’s first stint at the head of a team. He served as the interim head coach for the Golden State Warriors for 43 games last season. During that time, he and the rest of the Warriors staff would joke that they should get matching bracelets that said WWSD.

What would Steve Kerr do?

It wasn’t his team then, but that’s changed now.

“I love the staff that we put together, I trust their opinion, we sit down and talk about everything,” Walton said. “But ultimately it’s the vision I have that we’re trying to get across to the players.”

tania.ganguli@latimes.com

Twitter: @taniaganguli