![\"Dr.](\"https:\/\/s22928.pcdn.co\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/09\/Dr.-Vanessa-Brooks-640x430.jpg\")
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The Los Angeles Lakers announced that they have hired Dr. Vanessa Brooks as their head athletic trainer.<\/p>\n
Dr. Brooks spent the past five seasons as physical therapist and athletic trainer for the Oklahoma City Thunder.<\/p>\n
There was an opening for the position in the Lakers organization because Roger Sancho left to take a job with the Phoenix Suns.<\/p>\n
Dr. Brooks\u2019 resume before joining the Thunder and NBA includes an undergrad degree from Georgia and a doctorate degree from Emory University in Atlanta. She also previously did sports medicine work at Duke, which is of course the same school that new Lakers head coach JJ Redick attended.<\/p>\n
The hiring of Dr. Brooks completes an offseason in which the Lakers completely revamped their staff. After hiring Redick, he brought on a coaching staff that includes Nate McMillan, Scott Brooks, Bob Beyer, Greg St. Jean, Lindsay Harding, Beau Levesque and Michael Wrexler.<\/p>\n
Additionally, the Lakers recently hired\u00a0Zach Guthrie to be their G League head coach\u00a0of the South Bay Lakers and Ty Abbott as the director of player development.<\/p>\n
Dr. Leroy Sims was brought in to be the director of player performance & health so will likely work hand in hand with Dr. Brooks. The Lakers have struggled to keep players healthy in recent years, so the hope is that Sims and Brooks will be able to remedy that moving forward.<\/p>\n
One of Dr. Brooks\u2019 first tasks will be getting Lakers wing Jarred Vanderbilt back on the court as soon as possible as general manager Rob Pelinka recently\u00a0revealed that he underwent surgery on both feet this offseason and won\u2019t be ready for the start of training camp.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis offseason he did have two procedures, one on each of his feet. The procedures were highly successful and he\u2019s on a return-to-play program that so far has been lock-step and very promising, led by our new director of performance, Dr. Leroy Sims, and his team,\u201d Lakers vice president of basketball operations and general manager Rob Pelinka revealed on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019ve been doing a great job and we have a lot of optimism that when the real games start, he\u2019ll be available. Between now and then, there\u2019s still about a month and a lot of ramp-up steps that need to go well. So hopefully there won\u2019t be setbacks. But so far, very promising and we\u2019re grateful he has the issues in his feet behind him.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s now just a matter of getting fully ramped up and ready to be cleared.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Los Angeles Lakers announced that they have hired Dr. Vanessa Brooks as their head athletic trainer. Dr. Brooks spent the past five seasons as physical therapist… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":5155,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5154","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-nba"],"yoast_head":"\n