161. LeBron pulls off a crazy comeback over Utah, AD goes down again

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for confidential help. In Michigan one eight seven seven eight hope and why, or text hope and why to four six seven three six nine in New York. In Tennessee redline dial one eight hundred eight eight nine nine seven eight nine in Tennessee, visit www one eight dot one eight hundred gambler dot net in West Virginia. All right, Welcome to Lakers Tonight, presented by Fan Duel Here on the volume, I am Jason timp Happy Wednesday, everybody. I hope you're all having a great week. What a roller

coaster of a night that was. We are going to break down the game. We're gonna talk about Anthony Davis's injury and what it means. We're gonna talk about the All Star break and how important it is for this team. And then if you guys stick around for the end, I'm gonna talk about just how unfortunate this whole uh Lebron and Anthony Davis partnership has been in terms of luck.

And then at the end, we're gonna do a rapid fire where I go through just a bunch of the notes that I noticed during the game, get into the weeds a little bit. But you know, belief is a hell of a of a weapon in basketball. I remember when Anthony Davis was dealing with his hamstring injury or

excuse me, he's growing injury against the Phoenix Suns. One of the things that I advocated for was don't bring him back if you're not sure he can play, because the mental strain that it puts on a team to see one of your star players walk off the floor unable to play is damaging. It does a lot to slow down momentum, to take away that belief and make

it really difficult to win. And one of my strategies were one of the things I proposed in that series was like, hey, like you're at home, it's game five, give it your best shot by Anthony Davis an extra two days if he's ready to go in game six, go And then what happened. Anthony Davis went out and tried to play, pulled his growing again, and the Sun's utterly exploded in the first quarter against a really flat Lakers team, and it looked like that was gonna happen

again tonight after the Anthony Davis injury. It was a movie we've seen many times this season. Happened earlier this year, even when Anthony Davis went down with the knee injury against Minnesota and the Lakers fell apart at the end

of that game. But there was an interesting thing that happened late third quarter where Lebron got a rebound and went the length of the floor and he laid the ball up against I believe it was Gobert, and as he's going down the floor, Aaron Donald gets up off of his courtside seat and steps out onto the floor and gives Lebron, offers Lebron a high five, and Lebron notices the you know, Aaron stepping out there and gives him a big high five back, and the entire demeanor

of Lebron shifted, and then the entire demeanor of the team shifted. And it's crazy because it's just a simple case of greatness inspires greatness. We literally saw Aaron Donald put on one of the most dominant second halves we've ever seen from a defensive lineman in the Super Bowl making the pivotal play at the end of the game, and that inspired Lebron to see him sitting courtside to reach down in within himself and try to find something

to take control of that game. And coming of one of his worst fourth quarters, not just of this season, but one of the worst fourth quarters I've ever seen Lebron play in terms of his two way plays playmaking and is scoring against the Warriors. Lebron put together a masterpiece of game control there in that fourth quarter to

steal that game against the Utah Jazz. Such an interesting dynamic to watch him find belief out of the inspiration he got from a dude in another sport and to use that to kind of motivate him the rest of the game. Lots of big plays from lots of Lakers. We're gonna get to that in a little bit. For those of you are just joining us. This is Lakers Tonight, presented by FanDuel here on the volume. We were just talking about Lebron's fourth quarter, you know, with the ankle

injury for Anthony Davis. Obviously, all we know is what we visibly saw with the play and the way Anthony Davis reacted in terms of what he was feeling with pain, and then we have the X ray. That's all we have, so it's hard to go with no information. My gut tells me this isn't as big of a deal as it looks. But that's just my gut. So what is that worth? I don't know. We all thought. I was in a restaurant with some friends when a d hurt his knee, and almost immediately I was like, oh, season over,

Like he's falling down in the tunnel. The dude fell into his knee, this is over. And it turned out it was just a great I think it was a great to sprain and he was back in like six weeks, right, So we don't know what's going to happen on that front. Ankles are weird too, because they're horrifically painful. I've had ankle sprains that kept me out for months, and then I've had an ankle sprain where it felt awful, but then the next day I could have played if I

wanted to. So it's just really hard to tell. Obviously, the X ray is a big, a big part of it. They're seeing that the ligaments are still intact, and the fact that he didn't actually break a bone, that's obviously a good first step. But we're not really gonna know until tomorrow as far as how serious that is and

what it means for the team. But I do know what means that we're probably going to be without Anthony Davis for at least a little while, right, Like chances are the optimistic outcome here is that he's gone for at least three or four weeks, right, And so then this becomes just an even more pivotal stretch of Laker basketball because one of the topics that I planned for tonight was I wanted to talk about how important it was for the Lakers to get into the upper half

of the plan, to get into that seven or eight spot. And the reason why is because I think Phoenix is too good for the Lakers right now, even with Anthony Davis. Obviously with Anthony with Anthony Davis, but the Warriors, as good as they are and as as much better stuffs than anybody that's on the Sun's they have some shortcomings. They have some matchups that the Lakers can attack. There's some advantages there, and so one of the things that I was looking at was like, hey, we just need

to get up to seven or eight. Win that first playing game, earned the seven seed. Then we get our seven game or against the Warriors, which is a team that I think we can beat. As you saw in that game the other night, even with Draymond coming in. There's just some physical advantages there that the Lakers and can tap into that would be problematic for the Warriors

in a seven game series. Well, that becomes infinitely tougher the next if let's say Anthony Davis is out a month, so he comes back, you know, after March six, you have the Clippers coming up right after the All Star break. The Pelicans are playing better, Dallas has been playing really well lately, is defending the heck out of the ball. You play the Clippers again, do you have a game against the Warriors. You play at Phoenix against the Suns. You play the Toronto Raptors, who are so much better

now with Pascal Siakam plains so well. And then you have the Minnesota Timberwolves, who have been better than the Lakers this season. So it's a tough stretch of games here and it's gonna present an interesting dynamic for this team because belief is going to play a huge role. You know, Lebron as good as he was tonight down the stretch, I have noticed that since his knee injury he hasn't quite been as athletic as he was before.

The Injury's understandable what he's dealing with, Nie swelling, it's pain, it's it's it's there's a lack of you know, there's something going on there that's limiting him. And I think it's so important that he has this time here at the All Star break to get away from the game and get some rest on that knee. If you're up to me, I wouldn't even play in the All Star Game.

Last year he played thirteen minutes if I remember correctly, so it was one of the first times in his career he toned way back on minutes in the All Star Game. I'm sure he's under a ton of pressure from Adam Silver to make an appearance and to at least start the game, but it's worth getting off that knee.

Because the Lakers don't play again until February, that's a significant chunk of time to try to get some rest for Lebron and hopefully recover a little bit to where he was before the injury, but that stretch of games there over the course of this next month is incredibly pivotal because, like I said, it's so important for them

to get up to those upper seats. And that's where belief becomes a problem, because throughout this entire season, one of the biggest issues has been a lack of can insistant effort, and there's a lot of reasons for that. A big part of it is a lack of results, right, Like, because of personnel issues and scheming issues and injuries. The

Lakers have lost a lot of games. And when you're losing a lot of games, it's hard to do a dirty job, you know, Like most of us would do a dirty job if you paid us a lot of money, right, you know, it's like being a trucker. You're away from home all the time. They're gone a lot, but they pay pretty well, right, So it's it's a balance what Frank Vogel asks the kids to do or the guards to do. Excuse me, it's very difficult. It's taxing on

your body. It's requires a ton of focus, and the results weren't there, and so guys weren't really buying into it, and so getting this team to believe in what they're doing and the fact that it could work is going to be a challenge with Anthony Davis out now, because they need to once again, just like when Anthony Davis went out last time and they went seven and ten. They need to find a way to stay a in a very particularly tough stretch of their schedule, and that's

gonna be a challenge. Lebron is gonna be the one to keep an eye on. There have been a couple of moments this year where Lebron is teetered on that edge of kind of falling back into some of his old habits. Lebron hasn't quit on a basketball team in a very long time, but it's something he's done in the past, not like literally quit, but where he tones back his effort. He clearly gets frustrated, he has bad body language, he gets past progressive and so on and

so forth. And there have been a couple of times this season where I thought he might go that direction again, and he did it, and tonight again I thought the same thing. I'm like, man, Anthony Davis is out again. I wonder if Lebron is gonna reach a point where he just checks out mentally, and no he didn't. He

kept going. But that's gonna be tested again and again and again over the course of this next month as they go on the road to some of these difficult opponents, and they potentially take some tough losses, some losses where the team doesn't really have a chance to win, which is the most discouraging type of loss. So we really need to keep an eye on Lebron and his body language over the course of this next month to see

if he's up for it. Now, let's take a look at the worst case scenario, just because it's just an indicator of just how crazy this last couple of years has been. So. First of all, Lebron and Anthony Davis are arguably the most dominant duo that we've ever seen in the NBA. Obviously, there are a bunch of guys in that group. You know, we're talking Kobe and Shack, We're talking Stephan k D. But they were remarkably dominant

in their first season together. To give you an idea, in the Bubble playoffs, Lebron and A D played together on the floor for five D and sixty six minutes, and they outscored opponents by fourteen point eight points per one hun possessions. That's an outrageous number in any setting, let alone in a playoffs setting. To give you an example, Katie and Steph in two thousand seventeen. Mind you, the two thousand seventeen Warriors were the most dominant team that

I have been in this era. Katie and Steph in the two thousand seventeen playoffs were plus seventeen point one, so only about two points better than Lebron in a D were in the bubble. And that's with significantly better supporting pieces. That's with Draymond Green, that's with Clay Thompson and everybody else on that team that made that team so great. That's how good Lebron and a D were. That's a drum I've been beating NonStop over the course

of this last few years. I talked about how when Lebron and a D are healthy and can finish the game together, they win damn near eight of their games coming into this season. That's how good that group was. But this is a wild stat. If a D doesn't play again this season, which would happen in one of two situations. Either one the m R I comes back nasty and he's got to be out a couple of months,

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Restrictions apply see terms at sports book dot FanDuel dot com. Gambling problem called one eight hundred next step or text next step to five three three four two in Arizona one eight eight eight seven eight nine seven seven seven seven or visit CCPG dot org slash chat in Connecticut one eight hundred gambler or visit FanDuel dot com slash RG in Colorado, Indiana, New Jersey. In Virginia one eight

seven and seven seven seven zero stop in Louisiana. One eight hundred to seven zero seven one one seven for confidential help in Michigan one eight seven seven eight hope and why or text hope and why to four six seven three six nine in New York. In tennessee redline dial one eight hundred eight eight nine nine seven eight nine in Tennessee visit www one dot one eight hundred gambler dot net in West Virginia or two. Over the course of this next month, the wheels completely come off

and there's just no point in bringing him back. Those are both potentially likely outcomes. If Anthony Davis doesn't play again this season, him and Lebron will have played together in just fifty three of a hundred and seventy available

games since the bubble, fifty three of one seventy. That's less than one third, and it's incredibly unfortunate because, again, this is one of the most dominant duos that has ever graced the floor of an NBA court, who went on an incredibly dominant run and ran away with an NBA title, utterly dominated a team the Miami Heat, and Game five barely scraped a game out, and it was such an outlier performance that the Lakers utterly destroyed them in the next game. It was a they manhandled everybody

they went up against. No one could hang out and hang with them physically. They present this incredible dilemma for other teams where you have these two bigs in the front court that can guard all one all five positions, can switch everything, and on the other end of the floor, you can't keep them away from the rim. There's a there's a direct line you can draw on the basketball court between their fit, their natural fit with each other, and the results that took place, and it's been utterly

destroyed by injuries. It's the what are the chances that they would be on the floor together less than one third of their opportunities during this stretch. It's just really unfortunate, and I'm I'm hopeful that that's not the case. Again, my gut tells me that eighties injuries not that bad. My gut tells me that he'll be back in mid March. My gut tells me that because of the predicament with the play in, it doesn't make that much of a difference.

We literally watched him come back from the knee injury and almost immediately fit in beautifully with everybody. I don't need to see them get, you know, two three weeks of reps together for them to be ready for a playoff run. We just know that that's such a natural fit that he's going to slide right back in whenever he's ready to go. We know that he doesn't take too long to get his conditioning back. So I'm not like my I want to stay positive. I do, but again,

we don't know. And looking at the history of the way this partnership has worked, it just seems cursed in a lot of ways. And I'm really glad they got the one title they did, because that's what this partner's it was supposed to look like. That's how dominant the two of them are together, all right. I wanted to go rapid fire through some of the things that I

noticed in the game. So one of the interesting things that has taken place over the course of this last stretch of the season is the Lakers having to adopt more switching because they go small. Switching is a huge thing that I believe in because it stagnates your opponent. When you switch screens, it shutdowns actions. When you shut down actions, guys have to attack you in isolation. When

guys attack you in isolation, it stagnates them. And when it stagnates them, guys get out of rhythm and that's how they start playing poorly. We literally watched it just work to the against the Jazz twice in the last couple of months. It's a big thing that I believe in. But one of the big downsides of switching is Anthony Davis could end up guarding somebody far from the basket, right.

And so what I liked about the dynamic you saw tonight before Anthony Davis got hurt, and it's a dynamic the Lakers can lean on again when Anthony Davis comes back, is when he's on the floor, you can do more drop coverages. Right. The idea of a drop cover just a d guards your big man stays on the big man doesn't switch that way, he can linger around the basket. It works amazingly well against teams like Utah who use

a Rudy Gobert who can't shoot. Obviously, in specific matchups, it's not as good of an idea, but in this type of matchup it's awesome. You can keep a d around the basket. And he caused a lot of problems for Utah. But then you got to the second quarter and a D s on the bench. They put Lebron at center and they start switching everything and then they start causing problems for Utah doing that, and I like the dynamic of that. I talked about this last night

with the Boston Celtics. The ability to be defensively versatile, to have multiple punches in your bag, multiple directions you can go in order to you know, throw the opponent out of rhythm, you know, I I there are a bunch of other things you can You can play his own defense, you could do trapping, and there are a bunch of different things, but you need to have multiple punches. And the Lakers have multiple punches on that front, which I really like. I want to talk about Russ for

a second. Russ had a pretty damn good game tonight. And one of the big reasons why is he embraced the lot of the things that I've been talking about that role players need to do. You Know, one of the big things I've been harping on with Russ is he needs to be held accountable and asked to do what the role players do because that's what his you know, abilities actually line up with, as opposed to whatever his you know, his ego thinks he is as a basketball player.

Early in the game, one of the first possessions, he did something that I've been pleading for all season. He caught the ball wide open on the left wing, and instead of standing there because the team was ignoring him and taking a shot or holding the ball and doing something stupid, he just drove the clothes out on the kick. He just put his head down and went to the room again, and he had a head of steam. Mike

Conley tried to stop him, couldn't stop him. He got to the room and he made a layoup Later in the same quarter. A few possessions later, he on a Anthony Davis post up, cuts through the middle and gets a layout, and then later on another possession. He shoots at three and makes it, but it wasn't a stand still three. He came out of the corner and interchanged with somebody and got open and made a shot. Movement

is so key. What you were asking for from Russ is to not stand still, is to not take possessions off. We're asking you to be a role player. And when he is a role player, good things can happen. He had a huge offensive rebound late in the game. He had a couple of nice passes out to cutters. He made the right play. There was a big, big possession. I was panicking where he was in the left corner against Rudy Gobert, and he had that look in his eye,

and I'm like, he's about to do something stupid. He's about to do something stupid. No, he got the ball back to Lebron, and Lebron found Austin Reeves for the dagger. There's some there's some signs of life on that front. Now. The unfortunate thing is Anthony Davis going out of the picture slots Russ back up into a bigger role, which of course can throw a bunch of this out of whack. But there's some signs of life on that front. I'm

choosing to go positive. But then same game, first quarter, there's a play where he runs down to the left wing and he's guarding Bogdanovich, does a couple of switches, literally doesn't move. I think Royce O'Neil ends up in the corner. He's still on Royce O'Neil. Shot goes up, Royce O'Neill crashes the glass and gets an offensive rebound, kicks it back out to Bogdanovich and makes a three. Russ literally did not move on the possession, Like that

can't happen, man, Like those are the things. So it's a process. He never was going to turn around overnight. He has to slowly make these adjustments. But he started to show some of that life tonight. And you know what, I I'm not a Russ hater. I'm going to call out the positive when he starts to do that kind of stuff. So one of the things that moving on. One of the things that people have pointed to a lot is this idea that teams like to attack Austin reeves.

And it's interesting because there's a lot of like weird dynamics to it, right, Like skinny, super young looking white dude who's not very tall, not very athletic, and you know all of these super talented offensive players that are just trying to mix him up and attack him right, and everyone's eyes light up when they see him because they think it's an easy opportunity to score. But the dirty little secret is Austin Reeves is actually very very

good defender. He's a different type of defender than what you see elsewhere in the league. I've talked about this a lot on the pot in the past. There's a difference between a positional defender and aggressive ball pressure defender. And aggressive ball pressure defender is more like Avery Bradley's a lot of reaching, a lot of gambling. Austin doesn't reach and gamble. He just simply positions himself between you

and the rim and says, score over me. I'm not gonna value, I'm not gonna reach, I'm not gonna compromise my position. If you can make a shot over the top of me, kudos. And over the course of the season, when teams have tried to attack Austin Reeves in isolation, they're scoring about a point per possession, which is not great, meaning it's a it's an arrangement that's working well for

the Lakers. And most importantly, when a team gets out of their groove of doing what they're doing, especially teams like Utah. Teams like Utah that run really dynamic offenses, when they get out of their groove and they start playing ice so ball against your Austin Reeves, that throws them out of whack. Every possession where someone takes five plus dribbles to try to attack Austin Reeves while your other four defenders are standing still and resting and ready

to attack act the other way. When they miss, it's a positive, especially when the other teams not scoring on those possessions. So again, all these teams are saying, hey, we're attacking Austin Reeves. Good for you. Keep doing it. It's great for the Lakers. I was really impressed by Utah's defense tonight. They're like, you know, when you they brought a much better punch tonight than what they did

a couple of weeks back. You know, there's always like a spectrum in matchups when team A plays Team B. You know, if team A plays their best and team B plays their worst, you'll get one outcome and everything in between. Right, that's the dynamic of basketball. It's like the Milwaukee Bucks the other night. They're not that much better than the Lakers. They're a good amount better, They're not that much better. They threw their best punch, and

the Lakers through a bad punch. I was impressed by Utah's defensive intensity in that game throughout, which is what makes this such an impressive win for under the circumstance for Utah to bring a punch the way they did, the Lakers were two for thirteen from three in the first half on wide open looks all over the floor, and they just weren't going in and they battled through. Anthony Davis messes up his ankle, lots of reason to just pack it in and call it a night. No,

they fought through that. Now, there was a weird stretch in the second half where they went to Dwight totally disagree with that strategy. When you play an old fashioned plotting center, it plays right into the Utah Jazz his hands because now Rudy Gobert gets to camp under the basket the entire game, completely disrupt your offense. And then on the other end, he wasn't giving you like on the other end, because he's just not the same Dwight anymore.

He's not giving you anything in return. So I don't think it was surprising that the Jazz actually got it up to I think to twelve early fourth quarter with Dwight on the floor. Then Dwight goes off and they go back to playing small and they immediately go on a run to win the game. That's when the Lakers are gonna be at their best, and that's the way they need to play over the course of this next

stretch of games. And if you do plan on playing a center because of everything that's going on with Anthony Davis, you need to get another center in the buy out market. And guess what, Tris and Thompson is not available anymore. So that's gonna make things a little more complicated. But all that said, I was impressed by the punch that the Jazz through tonight, and I'm impressed by the fact that the Lakers fought through it and had a good

quality win story. Looking forward, here is going to be watching the guys over the course of this next month and whether or not they're willing to make a run at this because they've got a lot of reasons to try to pack it in. Alright, guys, that is all I have for tonight. I sincerely appreciate you guys coming to hang out. I am headed to breckon Ridge first thing in the morning for five days and I'm gonna bring all my stuff with me. If anything happens, I'm

gonna be there to break it down. But our next actual full blown show will be on Tuesday after the All Star Game. As always, I appreciate your guys to support and I see you then the volume