The joyful man sat by his locker. Nick Young scrolled through his phone. He teased one particular reporter as he often does. He then listened to some music.
That pre-game routine then came to an abrupt halt. Lakers coach Luke Walton approached him and indicated he would like to speak with Young privately. Walton hardly berated Young, though. With Walton planning to start Young in place of an injured Luol Deng, the Lakers’ coach simply challenged Young to take advantage of that opportunity by playing defense.
Nearly two hours later, the Lakers secured a 124-115 victory over the Denver Nuggets on Sunday at Citizens Business Bank Arena as Young provided 14 points on a 5-of-8 clip, four rebounds and two steals. The play impressed Walton so much that he described Young’s defense as “spectacular.”
“Obviously he’s going to make shots here or there,” Walton said. “But defensively, he’s fighting over screens, making one-on-one [stops] and getting in and mixing it up.”
What Walton asked Young to do seemed hardly new. Former Lakers coach Byron Scott pleaded for Young to do that in the past two seasons. But how Walton delivered his message resonated with Young, who often clashed with Scott because of his public criticisms.
“You have a coach that is telling you to shoot the ball and has confidence in you,” Young said. “All he wants you to do is play defense and do whatever you want on offense. That gives yourself a lot of confidence.”
So much confidence that Young called himself a “lock-down defender.” When informed about Walton’s positive analysis of his defensive play, Young joked that “I’ve been hearing that all my life.” Young then attributed his strong play both to his new haircut and new self-given nickname “Uncle P.”
In other words, Young sounded in a much better mood than what he experienced last season. Then, he averaged 7.3 points on a career-low 33.9 percent clip. Although he resisted publicly fighting back against Scott’s criticisms, their relationship never seemed to improve. Young then had a fall-out with D’Angelo Russell, who secretly recorded and inadvertently published a video of him admitting to infidelities. He then spent a summer anticipating that the Lakers would trade him.
Far too early to know if the Lakers will keep Young, who has two years left on his contract worth $11 million. Or if he can maintain the 10 points he has averaged in the past two exhibition games on 50 percent shooting. But Young has made public amends with Russell. Young also has received strong signals he will work and perform better under Walton’s guidance.
“It’s a new year. All the stuff is in the past,” Young said. “I just look good. When you look good, you play good.”
Young also played well in the 2013-14 season under former Lakers coach Mike D’Antoni where he averaged 17.9 points on a 43.5 percent clip. As a part-time analyst for the Lakers’ flagship station currently called Spectrum SportsNet, Walton then saw Young play good enough defense. So good that even Young took some charges.
When the Lakers gathered together at halftime, Walton included a clip of Lou Williams’ first-half charge in a brief film session. Will Young appear on future highlights?
“You hope to get to the point where guys want to take charges,” Walton said. Then they have that much pride in their defense.”
That might be asking too much.
“It’s hard to get up from charges,” Young said, laughing. “I’m Uncle P now. You don’t fall too much. You just try to make the right play.”
And Young mostly made the right plays after his head coach pulled him to the side before the game and respectfully outlined what he wanted.
“Luke is putting a ton of confidence in my head,” Young said. “He had my back. That’s all you can ask for in a coach.”
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Follow L.A. Daily News Lakers beat writer Mark Medina on Twitter and on Facebook. E-mail him at mark.medina@langnews.com