165. Lebron and the Lakers Quit, Should Vogel be out the door?

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dot com. Gambling problem called one eight hundred, next step or text next step to five three three four two in Arizona one a date 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 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 eight dot one eight hundred gambler dot net in West Virginia. All right, welcome to Lakers Tonight, presented by Fandel here on the volume. I'm Jason Timp Happy Sunday, everybody. I hope you all

had a great weekend. We are going to solemnly go over the latest example of the Lakers trying to tell us exactly who they are. We're gonna get into this, you know, it's funny. I talked with my producers after

the show the other night. I was so thankful for an opportunity to really get into the weeds of basketball, especially with the Lakers, and there's just not a lot to get into the weeds with tonight in terms of on the court, XS and Knows, because the Lakers quit, and when they quit, it no longer becomes about what's happening on the court. It becomes about a much larger issue. And we're gonna get into that um just for the

sake of having some sort of palate cleanser. At the end of the show tonight, I am gonna go around the league really quickly, touch on that Warriors MAVs games, the couple of interesting things that I saw in that game, will talk a little bit about just how dominant Philly has been. They will also talk a little bit about the Sons without CP three. But we have to start with the Lakers, and as as unfortunate as it is,

it seems like the most likely outcome ended up coming true. So, as I told you guys after the Anthony Davis injury, the Lakers were gonna have several opportunities over the course of this next twenty five games, twenty four games, whatever the number was, to quit because of the fact that even with Anthony Davis, they don't have enough talent to

beat the best teams in the league. And without Anthony Davis, they're mostly bad unless they play absolutely perfectly to their strengths and all of those little quirks about who they are as basketball players that plagued them all season. Only if those things weren't the case, could this team even compete with any decent basketball team on any given night.

And so they were going to find themselves in these circumstances where it was gonna be a question of whether or not it was worth it for them to go for it. And it happened right away in that Utah Jazz game. Excuse me, in the Clippers game, they're down forty to thirty three, you know, like early second quarter, and you're like, hey, maybe this is the time. And instead of quitting, they fought through that and they went for it. And unfortunately their leader, Lebron had a really,

really rough game and they lost. And so apparently that was the final blow because this was the first time this season where we didn't even have our fate comeback, We didn't even have our little signs of life as we went to the to the young players. This was a full blown team letting go of the rope and deciding that what it was going to take from the standpoint of work and effort and diligence to try to keep this ship afloat long enough for Anthony Davis to

come back. That's not worth it to the guys in that locker room. And that's one of those important details as fans that you guys gotta to try to remember. Don't don't burden yourself with caring more than the guys in the locker room care, because because they clearly don't.

And so I want to hit on two you guys in particular on that front, because these two guys are the leaders of the team right now without Anthony Davis, and they each kind of quit in their own unique way, and as a result, the rest of the team followed suit, and it led to the collapse that you saw tonight. For those of you who are just joining us, this is Lakers Tonight, presented by Fan Duel. Here on the volume, we're just talking about just how bad this Lakers quit

was tonight. I wanted to start with Lebron. You know, you can be a winner but have shortcomings, Like for instance, Lebron James and Kobe Bryant are both winners. There are two of the greatest winners in NBA history. I have them both as top five players all time, so it's not undercutting either of them, but the way that those two guys react to circumstances like this are very different.

So go back to two thousand thirteen for example, very similar example of a team that had great aspirations that wasn't coming together. There are a lot of differences in the sense that the way teams were put together fundamentally flawed, were flawed in different ways, but that two thousand thirteen team was in a similar predicament. They were up against it at the end of the season, needed to make a late push to make it to the playoffs. But there was also this obvious Paul hanging over the team,

this obvious understanding that they didn't have enough. The two thou thirteen Lakers weren't good enough. But Kobe looked at that with obstinates and was like, screw this, I'm I'm going down with the ship. And every single night, even though he was dealing with ankle stuff and banged up NonStop, he just pushed through in his own way to try to force the team across the finish line. And it

was a bad idea. It led to his achilles tear as he went on a long stretch of basketball there at the end of the season where he was pushing himself forty plus minutes a night, and it actually wasn't good for him, especially when you understood that that team wasn't good enough to win the title. But that was Kobe's way of reacting. That was Kobe's way of handling

that situation. Lebron, even though he is still very much a winner, the way that he handles these types of situations is as soon as he makes a calculation in his head that he understands that he no longer has what he needs within either his own physical condition in this case dealing with his knee injury and with the roster.

When he makes that calculation and decides, you know, does not compute, cannot win the title, he just, instead of doing what Kobe does, did instead of pushing through that finish line, Lebron's like, Hey, this isn't worth it, and I'm just gonna pull way back and just kind of closet through the finish line here and we'll get him

again next year. That's kind of been his idea, and there have been so many examples of that throughout his career, like in the two thousand fourteen NBA Finals with the heat. There was some bad body language. He was putting up big number is, but you could tell he wasn't really trying to assert himself in the game the way that he was capable of, because he knew that that team wasn't good enough. My one of my favorite examples of this is literally in the two thousand eighteen postseason in

the first round against Indiana Pacers. They're on the road in Game four in Indiana and they're down two games to one in Indiana is up by four with a couple of minutes left in the fourth quarter or about halfway through the fourth quarter, and Lebron's kind of in that same groove. You could see him in his head, you could see the body language, you could see the decision making, and he's thinking, hey, this might not be

worth it, and he was mailing it in. But then Kyle Korver came flying off the screen and hit a three, a big, big three to put the game back within the balance to where Lebron could take it, and he decided to go forward again. But that was an example of Lebron tetering on that line. Had they lost that game, they probably lose Game five at home, they probably go home in the first round, and Lebron's thinking, Hey, we couldn't have won it anyway. That's kind of been his philosophy.

It's a shortcoming. I always call Lebron a fair weather leader. If you have a team that has real championship aspirations, a real opportunity to win the championship, he's probably the best guy you could have in that seat. He has such an understanding of the the EBB and flow of the regular season. He has such an understanding of the ebb and flow of a seven game playoff series. He knows how to win at such a high level that

you cannot have a better guy in that spot. But if there's a team that legitimately cannot win the championship, he's one of the worst guys you can have in that spot because he's going to act like this. The truth of the matter is even though the Pelicans have been playing good basketball lately, even though the Pelican I think they literally just went into Phoenix and one the other day they're they're legitimately good. Uh, they're defending really hard.

Willie Green has the guys playing really hard Brandon Ingram was playing better defense than he has since he was in a Laker jersey. He that team is good, and so are the Clippers. But these were two intable games. These were two games that if Lebron and Russ really wanted to do this, they could have done it. And don't tell me about Lebron's box score. Don't tell me about how many points he scored. I don't want to hear about his field goal percentage. That wasn't disengaged Lebron.

That was willingly withholding massive portions of his ability to impact the game because he didn't think it was worth it. That's that is, in my opinion, indisputable for anybody who's actually watching what was happening on the court tonight. That was him telling you he didn't think it was worth it.

Now there's a case to be made that he's right, because the truth of the matter is Lebron, since his knee started swelling, hasn't looked remotely similar to the guy that we saw over the course of the last two and a half seasons that was very clearly the best player in the league. That's not the same guy that

we've seen in this last couple of weeks. I told you guys in the last show, I can't remember two games and three tries like this against the Clippers and against the Warriors where Lebron was this bad for an extended stretch of the game and this in this case in crunch time in both of those games. That's not a coincidence in my opinion, I don't think Lebron got worse.

I think he's struggling with lift on his most important leg, which is his left leg, and as a result, it's starting to affect a bunch of areas of his game. It's affecting his confidence, it's affecting his belief. That's part of that calculation he's making when he's saying I don't think it's worth going for this season. He's saying, my knee can't do this, and he's factoring that in. But this is Lebron's, this is this is part of that journey.

I would be I would be shocked if this doesn't end up going the route of the two thousand nineteen Lakers, where Lebron plays maybe a half dozen more game. I think he has to play fifty eight games to qualify for the scoring title. Maybe he guns for something like that. But I just I just don't I just don't see the point and trying to limp Lebron James and Anthony Davis injured versions of them into a first round series against the Phoenix Suns team that is going to beat

the living ship out of them. There's just no point in trying to to to persevere for something like that. Anthony Davis needs to take a good long time to heal up these injuries that he's been dealing with with his midfoot spraining with his knee, and Lebron needs to get whatever is going on with that left knee figured out. They need to retool in the off season, and they need to make a run next year because there's no point in continuing to waste physical resources on these guys

that don't want to do it. They've been trying all year long to tell us exactly who they are as a basketball team, and we've tried and tricked ourselves into thinking they might not be. But this is that, This is that final, This is that that that you know,

resounding statement of what they intend to do down the stretch. Now, the the way that Russ has choose to handle this is very different because Russ is a little more Kobe than he is Lebron in terms of his obstinates, Like Russ is going to pound his head into the wall to try to stop the season from going down this route. But you saw that tonight manifest in Russ's regression, regress, regressing back to what he was early in the season

when he was struggling. You know, Russ just played three of the best games he played in the Laker jersey against the Warriors, against the Jazz, and against the Clippers. He was excellent as a backup perimeter initiator, limiting his mistakes, generating rim pressure, creating shots for his teammates. He was giving better defensive effort than he had given in a

long time. And his way of quitting, I was saying, screw that, I'm going two thousand seventeen Russ, and today, all of his you know, all of that work he had done to temper his own nature to try to fit into the role, he just threw that all away tonight and went all in on. I'm just putting my head down and drive into the basket. Zero assists in seven turnovers. That's that. That that is That is the definition of Russ leaning. I guess he did have one

assistant crunched in garbage time. I want to make sure I give him his credit there. But you're seeing Russ in this case say screw it. I'm doing it my way. That's his way of quitting. Russ's way of quitting isn't gonna manifest the way that it did for Lebron. But what's funny is Lebron and the Lebron and Russ started this game with that tone. The rest of the team followed, and it was over, and this is the result that comes with that. I'm really curious to see what happens

here in the next couple of days. I'm curious to see if we get an announcement from Sham saying that Lebron's gonna hang it up, or that he's gonna take a week off for something along those lines, something referencing his knee. I'm curious to see if they dip into some G League talent and try to develop some of their younger players and maybe bench Russ or send Russ him or something along those lines. I'm really curious to

see what's gonna happen. Which brings us to Frank and This is the last thing I wanted to hit on on the Lakers front. You know, I have been back and forth about firing Frank all season. He was put in a really unfortunate position because he's kind of a

one pitch guy, Frank Vogel's pitches. If I'm a big basketball team that has defensive minded role players, I'm going to coach the best defense in the league because I'm going to chase and funnel guys to my big guys under the basket, and we're just gonna smother you with our physicality and we're gonna be incredibly difficult to score on. But if you lean into any other direction outside of that, it plays into his weaknesses. Defensive versatility, the willingness to

do different things on defense. That's a huge weakness of Frank's offensive. The understanding of how to scheme an NBA offense in the year two that's not a strength of Frank vocals. So when you build a team like this, it's obviously gonna play directly into his weaknesses and he's

gonna look inadequate. So I want to throw some defense to Frank Vogel in the sense that he was set up to fail but those weaknesses are what they are, and if you don't think that by next season you can recreate the personnel and the identity of the Lakers that Frank coached so well, then what's the point of keeping him. At this point, you can need to do

one of two things. You either need to have someone in house, someone like Phil Handy, to take the team moving forward, or you need to find somebody outside of the franchise. This now becomes a great opportunity in this next month and a half to get a look at Phil Handy, to get a look at Dave Fizdale, and to see if those guys can get the job done, just in terms of their scheming and their approach. You

get a feel for those guys after this season. If it's obvious that they're not the guys, then you can spend all summer or hopefully early in the summer, getting the best available candidate to come in and try to get this team back on track. But at this point, there's literally no reason to keep Frank around. There's nothing to be gained. All you're doing is hurting him, putting him in a situation where he's not happy, he's not engaged with the team anymore. The team's not engaged with him.

It's like continuing to date somebody that you know you're a bad fit with just because you live with each other, and moving out is kind of a pain. There's no point in delaying the inevitable here. I would give the keys to Phil Handy. The reason why is we already have examples of what David Fizdil is as a coach. There's leg work that can be done in the form of interviews and watching tape and digging back into Fizdal's history to see what he's like as a head coach.

We don't really know with Phil Handy. We don't know how he is managing timeout so we don't know how he is with time and clock situations. We don't know how he is play calling. We we haven't seen enough of that yet. So give Phil Handy a chance over the course of this next month and a half of the season to essentially audition for the head coach of the Lakers. That's the direction I would go because at this point, again, there's absolutely nothing to be gained by

keeping Frank around. He's a bad coach for this group, even though he's a good coach. For other groups. The guys have already quit on him, and you're gonna have to fire him this summer anyway, So why would you keep him around for a month and a half to be miserable so that all the guys can be miserable. Just try throwing a curveball in there and see if you can get something different over the course of this last stretch of the season, to try to get just

just a cleansing effect. But informmation, guys like there's just I'm not a defeatist, I'm an optimist. Rog and I all season long talked about how there was a good team in this Laker locker room. We were incredibly defensive of the fact that we knew that when Lebron and a d were healthy and they were surrounded by a scheme and a set of role players that worked, that they were extremely tough to beat. But for whatever reason,

it never came together. And the writings on the wall it needs to be accepted because if they didn't try tonight against the Pelicans in an extremely winnable game, go look at the rest of their schedule in March, what do you think they're gonna finally turn it up? Against the Sun's. Do you think they're gonna finally turn it up against the Warriors? They play the Mavericks on Tuesday. The Mavericks are awesome. We're gonna talk about them in

a few minutes. Do you think the Lakers are gonna suddenly figure it out against Dallas when this perfectly winnable game was on the table tonight and they literally just didn't go for it. They're telling you what they want. They want to be done, so let them be done. This is Lakers Tonight, presented by FanDuel here on the volume. I appreciate you guys coming to hang out. I I can't talk anymore Lakers tonight. Guys. I'm over. I'm over this team. We're gonna move on to some of the

other games that happened tonight. I wanted to talk specifically about that end of the game from Dallas and Golden State. Vandel Sports Book is an official sports betting partner of the NBA, and with FanDuel same game parlays, you can turn little bets into big pay days. Fandel is my favorite sports betting app because it is so incredibly user friendly and easy to navigate, make every game feel like

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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 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. So, I was so fascinated with the way that Dallas came back to win that game because they were getting a

boatload of stops. Golden State could not score. I saw a stat that one of the Lakers beat right or Warriors beat writers put out there that the Warriors did not make a field goal from the nine something minute mark two about the two minute mark in the fourth quarter. And so what I was fascinated by is the way that Dallas was getting stops because they had a line up out there with Luca don Chech, who's a good uh He's a big defender who can gamble and play

passing lanes a little bit. He's a decent positional defender, but he's certainly not a good defender. He's just passable, you know. Din Wittie's an okay defensive player. Jalen Brunson is okay. They went with Luca Spencer, Dinwitdi and Jalen Brunson. So the three best shot creators, Reggie Bullock, who was lock and trailing stuff all over the court and just denying him the basketball. But he's an only okay defensive player.

He's not a great defensive player. Had a good defensive season last year with the Knicks, but over the course of his career he's been more or less just an okay defensive player. And then Dorian Phineas Smith, who's a really good defensive wing. So they had Dorian Phinney Smith, a wing playing center, a two guard chasing Steff around, and then three more two guards on the floor and

completely and utterly shut down the Golden State Warriors. And I don't think that's a coincidence, And I think it's an example of the direction that the game of basketball is going in, something I've been talking about NonStop and something that I think is so important. And the teams that embrace this first are gonna be the teams that win, and the teams that cling to the old style of basketball are gonna be the ones that look like the Lakers.

So when you have that group and you switch everything, you shut down all of Golden State's actions, all of their pin downs and flares and and split cuts and and Steph flying off the screens. None of that works when you're switching everything. So then it becomes who can create a shot. And you've got Andrew Wiggins who loves to take and settle for eighteen to twenty ft pull up jump shots that he's only gonna make, you know, thirty eight percent of the time or whatever it is.

And then you've got Steph who, when they really are keying in on him at this phase in his career, he's gonna struggle to get shots off. I'll point I'll talk about that here in a minute, But for the most part, it's a lot of guys on the Warriors that aren't great at creating their own shot. Even Jordan Pool is really struggling against Dorton Fitty and Dorrian Phinney Smith's length. So at the end of the day, the Warriors,

they're high powered offense. There, their motion offense with all this movement and cutting and screening was utterly shut down by a team that just switched everything. And again, so many coaches get caught up in oh, I'm giving up a size mismatch. This guy can shoot a jump pook over Jalen Brunson in the post or this guy can get an offensive rebound against Spencer Dinwoodie. Yeah, you're right, they can't. You're gonna give up some things. Every defensive

scheme is an example of giving and taking. Here's the thing that I'm going to take away from you, and here's the thing that I'm giving to you as part of the process of taking that other thing away. And Dallas gave up seize mismatches all over the floor, Dallas gave up athleticism matchups all over the floor, and it

just didn't matter because they switched everything. And then on the other end of the floor with those three high level dribble drive guys and Spencer Dinwodie, Jalen Brunson and Luca don Chich there meanwhile getting fantastic stuff against a great Warriors defense that has tons of length and athleticism, that is great perimeter defenders who slide their feet and keep guys in front. And it's just not enough because on the other end, they're just picking their spots who

has the best matchup. Spencer Dinwoodie was getting good stuff. At the end of the game, the Luca was able to give the ball up because Spencer didn't Woodie was able to create his own shot and was able to create shots for his teammates. That's the advantage of that style of basketball. That is five out basketball, that is switch everything basketball, that is modern basketball, and that is

what works now. And for whatever reason, there is nobody in the Laker front office that has watched enough hoops over the course of the last five years to understand that, because they've done everything in their power to alienate that sort of thing and lean into it. When everything was hitting the fan in the third quarter today, guess where Frank Vogel went DeAndre Jordan's who at one point decided he was point DJ and dribble the ball up the floor and threw it thirty ft over someone's head into

the into the stands. Well when about exactly as you would expect for a non NBA player trying to play in an NBA basketball game. But at the end of the day, I thought it was super fascinating to see these teams like Dallas. There's so many other teams like this around the league that are succeeding playing a modern style of basketball. And it doesn't have to be Everyone told me all season long, the Lakers don't have defensive personnel.

The Lakers don't have guys that can keep people in front, and there's a lot of truth to that, but they certainly weren't going to succeed playing old fashioned basketball. If Dallas can get those guys to guard, the Lakers should have been able to get any of these guys to guard, and they just haven't been able to. Last thing, I wanted to hit on the Warriors with Step shooting slump.

So for this entire season he shooting thirty seven point six percent from three, but he's certainly not trending in the right direction because in his last eight games he's shooting thirty four point two from three. Before the Draymond injury, the Warriors were twenty eight and six, and since the Draymond injury they're fifteen and twelve. So obviously Draymond plays a part in this. Brings a lot on the defensive end,

but also for Step shot quality. He's really good at setting screens and re screening and and watching Step off the ball and hunting him in the spots that he likes to be. They have a great chemistry with each other, so shot quality is part of that, but the other part of it That's really fascinating to me because this

is I don't think this is a slump anymore. We are now bordering on this is a half of a season where Steph has not been able to shoot the three nearly as well as he has used to, like massive decline, like ten percent down from what he was shooting over the same stretch of games last year. That's how bad it's been. And what's really fascinating to me is the way that a guy like Steph Curry would age.

Because you watch a guy like Lebron, or you watch a guy like Chris Paul, you watch these, you watch these older the vets that are good with body positioning and pinning guys and using their strength and angles to

get their shots off. Lebron is way less athletic than he used to be when he was younger, but he's still so effective getting to the rim and finishing because he just does it with his strength and with savvy and positioning and ceiling and he's it's almost like a blow the rim version of his of himself, but with Steph, because he is a jump shooter, because the Lion's share of what he generates as a scorer is as a jump shooter, that minuscule decline can be the difference between

a great look and only an okay look. When Steph was at his peak physically, he could have an inch of space and that was enough for him. But maybe he needs five inches of space now as he slowed down a little bit, and that difference can be the difference between shoot on thirteen threes a game and shooting thirty percent on thirteen threes a game. So it remains to be seen because he looks mostly the same right like,

it doesn't look slow out there. But again, a miniscule decline for a guy like Steph could be the difference between him being a great shooter and an amazing greatest shooter of all time and just a great shooter. That's the type of decline that you might see there, and it remains to be seen. Like I said, this could either be a long, drawn on slump and we'll see him but bust out of this. I said this on

the Favorites earlier this week. Steph is a bona fide MVP candidate in my opinion because if he shoots really well for a month, if he has one month where he shoots from three on like fifteen attempts, then all of a sudden, his percentages around out he finishes around for the season. That's an MVP candidate because if they end up high enough in the standings, that's a very you know, traditional type of m VP candidate. So it's I'm not trying to you know, sign his own picture

where he's so to speak. I'm just saying that this is now a very very very long drawn out slump, and it very easily could be the sign of a decline. Really quick hitters here, I wanted to touch on just how dominant the Sixers have been. It's only been two games, but I have some crazy stats for you guys. So, James Harden and Joel Embiid have played fifty three minutes together. In those fifty three minutes, the Sixers are plus forty six.

Think about how crazy that is. That's a plus forty three point one net rating in those minutes, hundred and thirty four point five offensive rating that's outrageously good. One point four defensive rating that's outrageously good. That is about as resounding a dominant beginning to this era that you could have possibly scripted. What I thought was really interesting is the difference in the way that James Harden is

playing with EMBAT and without Embeat. So when in beads on the floor, James Harden is only attempting nine point five shots per thirty six minutes, but in those same minutes, he's averaging fifteen point seven assists per thirty six minutes. So when Joel embiads on the floor, he's going full playmaker. But when joe Ell Embiads off the floor, his field goal attempts go up to twenty point one per thirty six and his assists drop all the way down to

eight point four per thirty six. So he's completely changing his approach when it beats off the floor to your vintage James Harden, I'm trying to score the basketball. The reason why I think that's interesting is I think that one of the ways that these two teams, the way that Minnesota guarded him, in the way that the Knicks have guarded him way too much, like trapping and sending two bodies at Harden while he's running those screen and

rolls with him Beat. When James doesn't want to shoot when he's with him Beat, James wants to facilitate when he's with him beat. And my thing is, like, with how dominant e Beat is playing right now, very clearly one of the best players in the league, probably gonna win m v P. Why would you play into his strengths. You should want James Harden to beat you, not embeat.

So my thing is I would like to see some of these teams with them Beat on the floor, play James Harden straight up a little bit more and try to get the Sixers out of rhythm and start to try to get James to gun a little bit and

maybe get that dynamic to switch away. Because I did the amount of free throws that Joel Embiid is getting with James Harden is insane, and a big part of that is him catching the ball in that short role unguarded because his man is trapping James Harden thirty ft from the basket when James Harden doesn't want to shoot. So that that that's gonna be the interesting dynamic to watch. Their one last note on the Sixers. While Joel Embiid and James Harden are on the floor, other Sixers players

are shooting forty two point four percent from three. That's how open and high quality the looks are that the other role players are getting playing alongside Joel Embid and James Harden. That's scary, especially with how good the those role players are at doing the defensive job on the other end of the floor. Last really quick note before we get out of here, the Phoenix Suns lost their

second consecutive game without Chris Paul. Their offensive rating this season drops from one fifteen point nine with Chris Paul on the floor to one oh six point three without him. Translation. With Chris Paul on the floor, they're one of the best offenses in the league. With Chris Paul off the floor, they're one of the worst offenses in the league. That's basically the difference that we're talking about. And this goes back to what I said when I was talking about

the Sun's last week. This Chris Paul injury is fine. They bought so much leeway that they can drop a couple of home games like this and it's not a big deal. They're gonna end up the number one overall

seed pretty much no matter what. So everything's fine. But if Chris Paul for whatever reason can't play in the playoffs, whether it's from this injury or him being a shell of himself because he's not in shape when he gets back, or he's not in rhythm, or if you for whatever reason, suffers some other kind of injury and he can't play in the playoffs, this suddenly becomes a very beautiful basketball team. That's the fragility of the NBA. That's just how this works.

When you don't when guys get hurt, you lose. I mean, you don't have to look any further than the Lakers to understand that. But I'm just saying, even for a team as talented as the Sun's, they are not immune to that either, and they're gonna need all their guys to be healthy to have a real chance to win. Alright, guys, that's all I have for tonight. I appreciate you guys dealing with an extremely frustrating Laker team tonight. We will be back on Tuesday after the Dallas Mavericks game or

who knows what's gonna happen. Who knows if they're gonna have a different coach, who knows if they're even gonna go for it that night, But we will be here right after the final buzzer that night. As always, I appreciate your guys, support and I will see you in a couple of days. The volume