Let's now welcome in the host of the Clipper Countdown, the postgame show, a halftime show, our good friend the Saltier, Adam Austlin and Adam how are you today? Hey, guys going to be here on a zero f's given Friday. Let's go all right, let's do it. Let's start with your guys really playing some of the best basketball in the league right now. Kawhi gets extended. So what does that mean for Paul George and James Harden. Well, Kawhi Leonard postgame seemed to spill the beans a little bit.
He said, it sounds like everybody is coming back for the most part, something to that effect. So I think it's looking inevitable at this point. Now things could change with James Harden because he's not extension eligible. He's someone who is a true free agent going into next summer. Paul George currently is. I would imagine that gets done at some point and we'll see how the
regular season plays out and throughout the playoff run. So it's it's encouraging at least to see a guy like Kawhi Leonard be locked up going into the into It Dome with the way he has been playing, which has been absurd, where he's at twenty seven points per game over his last seventeen on shooting splits, Freddy of fifty eight percent from the field, fifty percent from the outside, and ninety percent from the free throw line over a seventeen game stretch.
You won't find better runs in NBA history than what Kawhi Leonard's been doing. Nah, He's been phenomenal. And by exigning him to extension, Adam, don't they almost have to design Paul George as well. I mean, I know it feels like you said, it's inevitable and we'll see about James Harden, but I gotta feel the same way. If they keep on this run, why wouldn't you? And my argument the other day was, you know it's gonna go either two ways. Fred seemed to think maybe they blow it
all up. But you can't do that going into the into it Dome. You gotta have your guys and horses and marketable guys going into that place. And the fact that they are playing well is just it really helps, you know, to that effect. But if they're going to do Kawhi, don't they got to bring them all back? Yeah? Good call, Fred, they've won sixteen of nineteen. Blow it up. No no, no, no, no, no. Wait a minute, Wait a minute, Wait a minute. What I said the receipts. No, no, get the
receipts. What I said was, if those guys are hurt or struggling this year, because they both have to have good years because they are eligible for an extension. But if they were not, if it was more of the same from the past, for whatever reason, then you have to take a serious look at this thing and go it didn't work. But now with Kawhi healthy and playing almost every game, and we don't know what will happen, but it sure seems like he's okay. You have to take a different approach
here. I mean, if the whole thing is gone. I don't know that, Kevin. I've said that in the past. Now, what happened last time we pulled the tape on Fred Rogan? No, Kevin knows. I said that. Good for Fred? Uh uh, Kevin knows? I said that. Wait, refreshment memory, What did you say, Fred, Kevin? Have I not said in the past, if Kawhi were talking lowing it up? No, Kawhi and Paul George struggle. If somebody gets hurt. If it's more of the same, then you have to look at it
and say it didn't work. And if it didn't work, then you have to do something. But I also said, but I mean if they catch lightning in a bottle of kawhis okay, if Paul George is fine, then you have to take a different look at it. In a body. This is why we need that new segment in twenty twenty four. Wrong, said fred And first of all, Freddy, what's the alternative. Then It's not like, if you don't pay Kawhi Leonard fifty million dollars, it just opens
up fifty more million in the salary cap. That's not how it works. You can go over the CAF to pay your own guys. They're not gonna have all that money to play with if they didn't resign him. If they don't resign Paul George. And by the way, they've won twenty one of their last twenty seven games. Now it works when they're healthy. There's not much more you can asked with the way this team has been playing since they've had a little bit more availability out there. It's always been like that with
Kawhi Leonard and Paul George. They won a seven hundred win percentage when those two are available and out there on the court, and they look great. Right now, Paul George has turned into damn near a catch and shoot guy like Klay Thompson or Michael Porter Junior. He's just letting him fly from the outside. And they're all having amazing seasons. Since they brought in James Harden, something one of us here predicted. I don't think it was Fred.
I don't think it was Fred. I don't think that's fair. I said, bringing James Harden would be a good idea. Bring me, I said, bringing James Harden, I said, I don't like the three headed monster, but the Clippers have nothing to lose, so do it and see what happens. So I did say that. I think we all remember that that. I do remember Fred saying, because what you've been doing hasn't work, you might as well try something you didn't that in a broken clock, a
blind scurorel, it happens. I don't need your salty now or you're getting it today. Baby. What else you got from refred any tough ones? Talk Lakers? Where are they? What do they need to do that is kind of a tough one. Where are they one of the worst teams defensively in the NBA since the n Season Tournament. When you look at what's happened to the Los Angeles Lakers, it's on the defensive side. That's where things
have completely fallen off. They were the sixth best defense on December twelfth, and I think they won the nd Season Tournament on December eleventh, and a game that never counted, never really happened because the stats they're erased from history. But Anthony Davis had forty one. They looked great, They looked like they were peaking. The problem was it was still early December, and that
is the problem. They got too high emotionally for that n Season Tournament where they didn't just win in Vegas, they won all the games leading up to it. They were perfect. But ever since then, teams have been torching them from the perimeter. It's not even just that they're getting into the paint and getting easy buckets on the interior. Anthony Davis is still fantastic. He's having an amazing season defensively in on offense, but on the perimeter, and
he talked about it last night. Teams went from shooting thirty seven percent from the outside on the Los Angeles Lakers before the nd season tournament to now shooting forty two percent from distance on high volume at thirty eight attempts from distance per game, So that means they're hitting about fifteen to sixteen three pointers on the Lakers every time out. And we saw it yesterday with the Phoenix Suns,
and they're big three, they were just walking into three pointers. So until they figure it out on the perimeter, and I think they are just fundamentally flawed with some of the roster construction. I told you guys this a month ago that the Lakers have too many guys that are one dimensional, that can play on one end of the court but get beat up on the other. You look at Austin Reeves, you look at d Lo. They're good on offense, they get picked on defensively. You look at Van don Cam they're
good on defense, they get picked on because they're zero's offensively. They don't have enough two way guys on this team. So it's put them in a really tough spot where this early in the season, already with the trade deadline coming up on February eighth, they're already speculating how do the Lakers salvage this thing? And it doesn't look like Darvin Ham is going anywhere. According to Chris Haynes earlier today, Yeah, I don't know how much anybody coming in
could do what you just talked about the way the roster is constructed. They've got issues beyond the coach, and I don't you know, you can't go from oh, a really good coach in early December to now he doesn't know what he's doing. It just doesn't make sense to me. But how much, Adam, do you think the absence, because this is where you go when you start losing the absence of Gabe Vincent, him not playing at all, the fact that they were counting on him to be one of those two
way guys. That absence has really affected them. I mean it's hurt them to some degree, But I don't think Gave Vincent was saving this team. It was a nice pickup for them, but he's also a smaller player who would get hunted in matchups on the defensive end. I mean, they have Austin Reeves who's having a down season from the outside. He's just a thirty
three percent after I think shooting almost forty percent from distance last season. So some of the guys that you relied upon continuing to grow and ruy Hachi Moor has been hurt now and what the message was coming out of that series in the Western Conference Finals getting swept by the Denver Nuggets. But granted the Lakers
were in those games in the fourth quarter. If you're looking for a silver lining, was hey that Denver team, they had continuity, they had been together for a while, and Rob Polenka and the Lakers said, we want the same thing. We want to bring this team back, run it through for eighty two games this time, make some moves on the margins like with Gabe Vinson and will be okay. But it hasn't worked out that way.
Injuries, guys regressing or just having down years. And even with Lebron James and Anthony Davis being this available, there's still a game under five hundred. That's really the most flexing thing with this Lakers team. They've had their big two for the most part, and they haven't taken advantage of it to this point. Adam Brian Windhorst wrote that you mentioned the trade deadline and the Clippers,
I mean the Lakers are gonna have to do something. But the problem is, according to Brian Windhors, there aren't a lot of players on the Lakers roster that other teams are interested in. And if that's the case, how do you make a trade. Well, if you're not giving up Austin Reeves, if you learn from what happened with Alex Caruso a couple of seasons ago, and obviously they had sellers remorse there. They could have just matched and held on to him and kept everybody, but they made a decision there.
It didn't work out. And Austin Reeves has beloved in the same way that Alex Caruso was for his hard, tough play, and he's on a very team friendly deal too. So when it's rumored that Okay de Johonte Murray could be floated by the Atlanta Hawks and that's somebody the Lakers could be interested in, that's great. He's an upgrade talent wise, but you're also spending
much more on him. He's making almost thirty min million dollars over the next three or four seasons now, so you got to commit a lot of money to a guy that may not work within the timeframe. Of when you have Anthony Davis and Lebron James, who, well Lebron could be out after next season obviously with BRONI coming into the NBA, But nothing's really lying up for
them on the trade market. You could still say tomar DeRozan with the Chicago Bulls, Zach Levine with the Chicago Bulls, who also makes a ton of money over forty million per year over the next three seasons. I know he has a player option for forty eight million on the back end of that. He like likely picks that up. But it's just not the robust trade market
you would hope it would be for the Lakers. And yeah, they're missing some of the pieces right now because they haven't had a chance to show off Ruey Haschimore and the growth that he has made over the offseason because he's been hurt and banged up. They are in a really tough spot in a Western conference that has loaded, that is packed, that is licking their chops every
time. They're taking on the Los Angeles Lakers, who are going to be in Utah tomorrow against a team that I think is one twelve or fourteen and looks a much better now when they were supposed to be sellers. Oh market is going to be available. They're back in the hunt now they could be
a playing team. So it's a highly competitive situation right now in the West where the Lakers really didn't have a lot of room for error, and to struggle to this degree where they are five and eleven, I believe now since the n season tournament, is a little bit shocking because again, Lebron and ad have been there enough where they should be a more competent team than this. Yes, when those two guys are playing, that's a scary part about
it. Those two guys are in the lineup number one and number two. They've been playing well and they just don't get any help from anybody else. And I'm going back to the Clippers. You know they are playing well, but you know Fred tried to deflect to the Lakers. I didn't like that. Let's go back to the Clippers. We knew you wouldn't like it, but we had to do it. You want me to read that suitet that you put out calling out Lebron James Freddie the other night when he was taken
out of the game against the Los Angeles. Now, was that somebody else tweeting for you. No, no, no, you meant no no, you meant Kawhi okay, and that was that was Kawhi. You got me mixed up now because you want to talk Lakers too much. No, Kawhi, And I don't understand why he was taken out of the game. At him. He just came back from a hip injury. No three minute minutes, no rection, stop it, minute restriction. There's three minutes left in
the game. It's in eighty two game season. If you're the guy that's gonna say Kawhi Leonard is injury prone, but also the guy that's saying, oh, it's just three more minutes, those two things don't work. He didn't have that restriction the other the game after that, My god, So what did he say? And then he put him back in with his name blew out Phoenix and he only played thirty minutes. It doesn't matter too So they save two minutes and forty five seconds of the game they should have won.
Come on, if he gets in that time and re injured the hip that he already reinjured. Yeah, but what's necessary if he's not sup plus supposed to play more than thirty five minutes in the ball game, and you're in a tight game down the stretch and it's game what thirty five of the regular season was still a lot of room to go. I don't think the priority is just winning that game against Los Angeles Lakers. They got bigger fish to fry. That is absurd. That is absurd. Two minutes well,
you know what, he could get hurt walking under the court too. It's two minutes at him. He could, but it's necessary to walk out on the court. It wasn't necessary for him to play those minutes, and it wasn't a guarantee they were gonna win the game anyways with him as he was having an offer. But you're in that game and you deserve to win. You deserve to have that opportunity. Come on. Then he put him back there on the front end of a back to back with a guy that you
have said is injury prone. But you don't think that they should keep him from playing forty minutes. No, no, no, yeah, no, it makes a lot of sense to me. No, it makes no sense. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, it doesn't make any sense. And you know it, it does make sense, Freddy. You can't have it both ways. Kawhi's injury prone. You gotta baby him. But also you're gonna get mad when they take him out of a game late. No, this is beautiful, This is beautiful. Come on,
I'm he's eating his popcorn. No, I'm done with you. Nothing. It hasted your pipe, Freddie, huh, you know what, take your sultan, get out all right, Adam, have a good weekend, all right, Love you, Rodney, fred What you got something else coming? Oh God,