Hoops Tonight - LeBron James & Lakers struggling, Wolves-76ers, Knicks pursuing Donovan Mitchell?

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sixty eight hours after issuance. See dkang dot com slash basketball for eligibility and deposit restrictions, terms and responsible gaming resources. All right, welcome to hoops tonight here at the Volume, Happy Thursday, everybody. Hope all of you guys are having an incredible week. Quick show today, we're just gonna hit Wolves sixers from last night and the heater that Joel Embiid has been on, as well as some stuff about

Tyrese Maxim the success that he's been having. Then we're gonna talk about the New York Knicks, who are playing some really good basketball as of late and have their two stars playing at a really high level, but some decisions to make with what's around the corner and with the injury to Mitchell Robinson. And then at the end of the show, we're gonna talk about the Los Angeles Lakers, who have been in a free fall since winning the n season tournament. You guys are the Joe pot we

get started. Subscribe to our brand new YouTube channel would mean a lot to me if you guys would take a second to scroll down and hit that subscribe button. Don't forget about our podcast feed wherever get your podcast under Hoops Tonight. Follow me on Twitter at underscore Jason lt. So you guys don't miss any show announcements or the film threads that I do from time to time in the mornings, and the last but not least, keep dropping

mail bag questions in the YouTube comments. We're gonna be doing an extensive mail bag intomorrow's show like we usually do on Friday. All right, let's talk some basketball. So Sixer is gonna big win. Come from behind in the fourth quarter to beat the Wolves last night comfortably. Joel em Beat has been on an absolute tear after scoring

fifty last night. In his last eight games, he's gone for forty plus five times fifty twice, averaging forty one to thirteen, sixty two percent from the field, thirty eight percent from three, and ninety three percent at the line. Now, like so many people who have watched that game yesterday, a lot of trips to the foul line, a lot of mid range jump shots, and you know, it's one of those things where I think it's okay to have two completely separate takes on joelmb And what I mean

by that is he's incredible. Him and Drew Hanlin have worked really hard to build out a super versatile skill set for Joel EMBII, and he's become a very well rounded score. Obviously, the mid range jump shot and that being deadly is the foundational piece, right. He's made sixty three mid range jumpers already this season. He's shooting forty seven point four percent on them. Last night he was eleven for fourteen on mid range jump shots against the Timberwolves.

It's a good mix of both. It's isolation hesitation pull up jump shots, it's you know, face up jab step jump shots, and then it's jump shots that he takes off the catch and pick and roll when he kind of rolls to that you know, seventeen to fifteen foot mark right around the foul line. Right. He's also gotten really good at feeling body contact. It's an important concept we talk about, like feeling on your shoulder blades where the defender is so that you can spin off when

you have your back to the basket. You had two dunks like that last night, spinning off of Nase, reed off of the right block, and then kind of off the left elbow when he was getting guarded by Kyle Anderson and saw a double team coming from the right side, very smartly spun to the left, got into the lane and threw down the dunk. He's also deadly in catch and shoot situations this year, specifically from three Joe l Embiid is shooting forty nine percent on catch and shoot

threes this year. Think about how insane that is. He's also passing the ball better than ever. He's averaging six assists per game. To give you an idea, he in three three hundred and ninety four games for the Sixers before this season, did Or hit a seven assist mark twenty seven times in three hundred and ninety four games. He's already done it ten times this season, so it's

clearly gone up a level as a passer. He's just become a remarkably difficult player to guard and very well might be the best regular season player in the NBA right now. I mean all of that that is the first take the second take is that watching him drives me absolutely crazy. The foul grifting is reprehensible at this point. And for the record, before I go any further here, this is not Joel Embiid's fault. Joel Embiid is a competitor who wants to win basketball games, and so he

was doing whatever is necessary to win basketball games. That is what you should do. Famously, if you guys remember Greg Popovich used to say of the Spurs teams in the early two thousand, thousand, twenty tens, I should say, used to say, you think I want to be taking all these threes. No, that's not what he wants to do. It's just what you have to do, in his opinion at the time, for his personnel, in order to give

yourself the best chance to win. As a simple factor of math, the point being, competitors do what they have to do to win. So I'm not upset with Joel Embiid about this. Everything I'm about to say is one thousand percent directed towards the NBA them giving too much wherewithal of freedom to the officials to determine the way basketball games flow, and the officials in particular not knowing

how to properly manage a basketball game. You know, it's funny because like the watching this particular film, obviously, with Synergy, the film software that I use, they just pick a random broadcast and they use that to filter the footage,

and this one happened to be the Minnesota broadcast. So watching the Minnesota broadcast from the early part of the game, you know, Joelnbid's doing that thing he always does where he like gets down into the defender and then like ducks his body, sticks his arms out and just rises up into a pull up jump shot and tries to take a shot, a complete non basketball play. For the record, never ever, ever, will you see in any pickup run

anywhere around the country. I won't even see it really at the high school or college level because players aren't doing it, Refs aren't calling it. But you'll never see that shot. Why because what is the purpose of the pull up jump shot in basketball? The purpose of the pull up jump shot in basketball is a coverage beater. Okay, I'm isolating the guy and he's given me too much space. I'm gonna hit a little step back to get a little bit more space, and I'm gonna rise up and

take this jump shot or in the post. I'm gonna bump him with that left shoulder, knock him off, and turn over my right shoulder and take a shot because I've created separation between me and the defender. That's the Kawhi Leonard move right. I'm coming off of this ball screen and pick and roll. I've got the defender pinned on the pick drop coverage, biggest, too far back. I'm gonna rise up and take this pull up jump shot. That is what basketball says a pull up jump shot

should be. So why in the world is Joel Embiid going into defenders and deliberately extending the basketball, making it available for contact, and then taking shots when that's objectively a bad basketball play. It's a lower percentage shot for him. If that call never got called, Joel Embiid would have to create separation before shots, which, by the way, he's great at. He's great at that too, But we're setting into the foul line more than a dozen times per

game on shit like that. That's not a basketball play. That's objectively a bad basketball play that Joel Embiid, the competitor, does to increase his offensive output. It was crazy listening to the broadcast and hearing the Timberwolves guys just like as Embiid's work, because I mean, he was eleven for fourteen on mid ra in jump shots, so you can tell he was operating in that area a lot in this game. And that's fourteen shot attempts that registered in

the box score. Think about all the ones that didn't count because he didn't make the shot. Right, He's operating almost exclusively out of that area. And you can hear the Wolves announcers like watch your hands, watch your hands. You can literally see the defenders and they're all like spazzing, and they're they're like terrified that they might if they contest the shot, they might send Joel Embiid to the foul line. And it just it's a it's bad on

a bunch of different levels. One, it's objectively bad for the game of basketball. Why because it makes for a bad television product. I watch a lot of basketball, it's my job, and like, unquestionably watching these Sixers games as a chore that I find things that I love. I told you like some of em Beat's footwork in the post is always super impressive to me. The pivot moves

we were talking about earlier feeling contact. We're going to talk about Tyrese Maxe in a minute, and some of the stuff that he's been doing lately that I really really like. There's a lot of things that I like in there, but it's being bisected and cut apart by this relentless foul drifting attack from Joel Embiid that makes it a bad television product. And then the second part of it is every year we get to April and suddenly the refs decide they don't want to reward that

with free throws as much. They still occasionally do, but nowhere near as frequently. So the refs are telling you, we don't think this is basketball in April, May June, but they allow it to be basketball in October, November through the early portion of April, right. And so what ends up happening is it becomes part of the problem for Joel Embiid is that a big part of that his offensive approach just becomes useless when he gets to that point, which has consistently been a part of what

causes his his effectiveness to decline. Even when MB gets to the foul line. In the playoffs, it's one he's physically aggressive towards the basket, but guys are allowed to press up on him more in the mid range. Suddenly his mid range jump shot percentage tanks like it did the last few post seasons, and then his offensive effectiveness

goes down. So it's just objectively bad for everybody. It's bad for the fans, it's bad for the league, it's bad for Joel in the long run, and objectively, it just it drives me crazy to watch, drives me crazy. And again, not in Bead's fault. It's one one hundred percent the NBA's fault. Something I've been bitching a moment about all season because it's literally hurt in the game

that I love and I like. There was a play where MB caught at the top of the key and nas Read's guarding him and and b just rips through the left and Nod slides his feet, takes the contact in the check and as Embiid runs into his chest, just throws up the ball, literally just throws up the ball gets rewarded with two free throws. Like I said, it's reprehensible, straight straight up bad for the league. And it's a bummer because Joel Embiid is playing some of

the best basketball in the NBA right now. Like I said, he's arguably the best regular season player right now. He's my favorite for MVP right now. As I said in our MVP rankings on Sunday last week, it is not an anti Embid take. It is one thousand percent anti NBA tick now. In addition to Joel Embid bust and everybody's ass Tyres, Maxy's playing incredible. This is a tough matchup too. He's being guarded by Jada McDaniels for a

good portion of this game. And you know, when you have Jada McDaniels on ball and Rudy Gober waiting for you in ball screens, it can be tough. It can be a tough challenge, right But what's crazy is, you

know Max, he still had some plays against that. There was a play I clipped and put on my Twitter feed this morning where he, you know, sets up McDaniels for a screen, gets around to the left and go Baar steps up and he like straight up like Euro steps around him and finishes with the left handed scoop shot off the glass after getting into his body with his right shoulder. And I'm like, this is ridiculous, Like this is a superstar play that you're seeing right here.

But one of the things that I wanted to highlight today specifically, and it's a concept that I talk about a lot on this show, is the offensive variability or versatility or you know, just like the different approaches that Tyree's Maxi has on offense which makes him harder to guard. So, for instance, what's you know, Tyre's Maxey's advantage against Jade McDaniels. Speed, Right,

that's his biggest advantage. That's it. Jade McDaniels is fast too, and he has length, and so especially if you get into the habit of spamming actions against him, he's going to win that battle a lot of the time. In my opinion, Jade McDaniels is one of the top two

or three perimeter defenders in basketball, right. But I want to emphasize movement shooting here for a second, and I want to highlight a specific play because this is something that Tyrese has been doing all season and killing teams with. So it's in the bench group, I think, and it was I want to say, early fourth quarter, and Tyresee is pushing in transition and he's trying to turn the corner on Tyres on Jaden McDaniels a cant has to turn and throw the ball back out to Paul Reid.

As soon as Paul red catches it, Tyrese just kind of gives a little shove to Jayden and then sprints out to the three point line at the top of the key, takes an escape step like a long lunch step after he gets the dribble hand off from Paul Reid and rises up into a right left footwork to rise in fire off the catch jump shot nails it. And that's the thing that is an entirely different type of offensive attack than an off the dribble ball screen or an off the dribble ISO or one of the

many different actions that they might run. Where Tyrese is in a set position with Jaden on him and trying to get separation via screen or whatever from the perimeter, his ability to be like, well, you stopped me on this strip, but I'm a great movement shooter too, so you better get ready to lock and trail because I'm coming right back off that screen to my left and he can do it to his right. You know, this

is a consistent thing that they run. They'll have him come out of the corner and they'll run him off of like a double stagger dribble handoff, and he'll just rise in fire from the left wing, coming off of like a long arcing sprint. Like it's just a significant element of his offensive attack that prevents him from ever

doing the same thing over and over again. And maintaining that variety and making sure that your attack has a different, like a different approach, not just so that you can make yourself harder regard for that individual defender, but so that you have a different thing you can use on every single defender. This is something I like I've told you guys this story a bunch of times on the show.

But like I was a light bloomer, right, So, Like when I was playing in college, I was just an athlete, right So, like guard to the other team's best player, took some spot up shots, Like I had some scoring games when I was in JUCO, but Juco's lower level competition doesn't mean anything. And like, basically I was an athlete role player, and so as I got older, like I developed into a more skilled, perimeter oriented basketball player

in my late twenties early thirties. It was a transformation later, right, because I was a late bloomer. I didn't play basketball when I was young. So what's interesting is I've encountered some of these things where it's like, okay, I became My core skill was that I could shoot, and especially as I got into my late twenties, I became a good shooter. In college, I was only an OK shooter. Became a good shooter when I was in my late twenties. And so I'm tall, you know, sixty six, got long arms,

and I can move really well. So like guys, it got to the point where you just couldn't put a slower guy on me because if you did, I just I would just toast him off the dribble or give me too much space, and I would take those jump shots over the top. And I got really good at

shooting pull up threes. So what everybody started doing is putting a smaller, quicker player on me and pressing up on me and doing that so that they could test my handle and make it so that yeah, even if I try to make this move, this dude's quicker because he's a you know, six ' two guard, and I'm this bigger wing player right, and so I had to add things like a back to the basket post game. And then another big thing I added was movement shooting.

I worked relentlessly on the same left, right, right left footwork depending on which angle I was coming off of a screen, just so that I could walk into every game and be like, who are you guarding me with? Guarding me with a little guard. Okay, I'm gonna work out of the high post low post this game. You're guarding me with a big, a slow guy. Okay, I'm gonna work primarily off the dribble from the perimeter. You're

guarding me with a wing that has similar athleticism to me. Okay, now I'm gonna need to use a combination of all three to try to keep the guy off balance. Right. It's a vital part, in my opinion, of reaching scoring resiliency. They're scoring, and then they're scoring resiliency. Scoring is like, on any given night, if the conditions are right, I

can put up numbers. Scoring Resiliency is maintaining those numbers in varying conditions, and that to me is a big step forward going from not just from good role player that can score to star, but also by going from

star to superstar. And it's one of the things that makes Tyrese Maxi such an enticing young prospect is like, he is a great movement shooter, he is a great spot up player, and he's becoming a great pick and roll score as well, and that variety will give him all of the resiliency that I'm talking about to be the best version of a score that he can be

really good win for the Sixers. You know, it's funny they went on that stretch where they lost to a bunch of bad teams and beat a bunch of bad teams, excuse me, and then they lost to Chicago the other night. And this is another one of my prevailing basketball theories, which is when you play a bunch of bad teams in a row, you form bad habits. In the Chicago Bulls have been playing some damn good basketball, an excellent point of attack defense out of Alex Cruso and Javon Carter,

and you know, Kobe White's playing extremely well. Demarta Rozen is starting to get it going, and it's like the Bulls are just good right now. So you are playing bad team night after night after night for like two weeks and then suddenly a really good team comes to town. You're accustomed to a certain level of intensity, a certain level of focus, certain level of overall effort, right, and then this good team comes to town, and sometimes there

can be an adjustment period there. And so to bounce back from what was not a predictable loss to Chicago but an understandable loss to Chicago with a big win over the team that I think has been playing the best basketball in the Western Conference in Minnesota, good win for the Sixers on the Wolves front. Really hard to beat the Sixers in Philly when Embid's getting that type of whistle, when he's got his mid range jumper going, like I said, eleven for fourteen from the mid range,

it just made it really really difficult to guard them. Right. Overall though, the Wolves are playing really good basketball, and I love the formula they're building. Yes, they struggled with Embiid, but they've been shutting teams water off, particularly perimeter stars around the league. I was watching Wolve's heat the other day and Anthony Edwards and Jade McDaniels just like completely locked up Jimmy Butler down the stretch of that game, and Rudy Gobay head Bam and jail forcing him into

these really tough pull up jump shots. There's this play where Bam finally gets like super physically aggressive because he's sicker Rudy Gobert and like rips through to the left and like bumps him with that left shoulder and shoves go bear off and tries to step through and get into the lane for Gobart recovered and swatted his ass into like a fast break opportunity for Anthony Edwards to go up and dunk with two hands. They are really good at pushing in transition selectively, not as much as

I'd like. I'd like to see them push a little bit more because they're a mediocre half court offense. But they have been the fourth best team in the league this year at converting transition possessions into points according to Cleaning the Glass, at one point three to three points per transition possession. As of right now, they're the only team in the league holding teams below one hundred and ten points per one hundred possessions. They're at one oh

seven point five. My only concern right now with the Wolves really is their half court offense, where they're sixteenth and as I've said throughout the season, they're ceiling will entirely come down to Anthony Edwards half court shot creation. In my opinion, he's just gonna have to be a guy that can win rock fights by generating quality shots, and for whatever it's worth, he's been pretty good at

that in the previous two postseasons. I wanted to talk about the New York Knicks for a little bit, and then we're gonna talk about the Lakers. So the Knicks blew out the nets in Brooklyn last night and then two days after, two days earlier, I should say, they went into LA and beat the Lakers. Two. They took a couple of tough losses earlier this month on the

road in Milwaukee and Boston. Those are really tough games to win, and those are the two best teams in the conference, right But outside of those two games, so in the nineteen games, outside of their last in their last twenty one, outside of the two games that they played against Boston and Milwaukee, they're fourteen to five and their fourth in offense overall. Since November fourth, that's a significant chunk of time. That's the majority of the season

to this point. In that span. Both Randall and Brunson are averaging twenty five points per game, Jalen Brunson twenty five to four and six on sixty two central shooting and Julius Randall in twenty five nine and five on sixty percent true shooting. Now, the defense has fallen apart since Mitchell Robinson got hurt and we found out last night he's gonna be out for the season. We're gonna talk about that in a minute. But the Knicks are giving up one hundred and twenty points per one hundred

possessions over their last six games. Big part there is the lack of rim protection. Again, Isaiah Hartenstein is a really good player who fits really well with this unit. Both Julius Randall and Jalen Brunson have a unique ability to engage help defenders, and like Randall just by bullying fours and drawing the rim protector in, Jalen Brunson pulling the rim protector out in his drop coverage when he needs to contest Brunson's floaters and mid range jump shots

and stuff. And every time they do that, it just ends up with hart and Stein either with a smaller player pinned on him underneath the basket or just by himself, and he had another five offensive rebounds last night. He's just killing teams on the glass. Harden sign's great, but obviously when you have some small perimeter personnel outside of Julius Randall and you don't have rim protection, it's just hard to go. And so that's something that we've been

seeing now. Obviously, like I talked about last week, the Cleveland Cavaliers are one of the teams that could potentially be looking to make some decision now. They've been playing some decent basketball as of late. But as I've been talking about Donovan Mitchell, it very well could be comes available as a trade target this year. And that was one of the guys that the Knicks were originally after, and I wouldn't be surprised if they look to go that route again. And so we have two Knicks fans

on my team here at Hoops Tonight. Shout out to you, Paul Farrington and Josh Rodriguez. They are both instrumental to the day to day stuff with this show and they're both Knicks fans. And I was asking them about whether or not they would want Donovan Mitchell, and it was split down the middle, one of the guys wanted and one of the other guys not so much. And I find this to be an interesting example of team building that I wanted to talk to so I talk about

so one of the things that we've talked about. I should say one of the things that Knicks fans have been talking a lot about is man like they just don't have any shock creation beyond Jalen Brunson, and it just turns into that one man show and things fall apart. And I understand that when you look at what happened last year in the postseason, which was Jalen Brunson was incredible and damn near got you to the Conference finals. Literally had a chance to win Game six in Miami.

Was this close where you would have gone home and had a good opportunity to win that series, right, But Julius Randall was terrible, and because he was terrible, they had no second option and then Ni's lost. But I'm a firm believer that Julius Randall is actually the kind of player who should do well in the playoffs. The problem is he's very much a rhythm player, and he was hurt last year. He messed up his ankle right before the postseason. And like again when I say rhythm player,

there are a lot of guys out there. You ever see that guy. I have a friend like this, a guy this, This guy like could go twelve years of that touching a basketball and then I could put him in a gym and he'd shoot the ball well. And like legitimately he never plays. And when he does go play for whatever reason, or if we him and I go shooting around or something, he just still has his touch and stuff because he played a lot when he

was younger. He just has very natural rhythm. Kevin Durants, A guy like this, like Kevin Durant could go without touching a basketball or without playing in an NBA game for two months and then step on the floor and more or less look like the KD that we know. Right, Rhythm players like they kind of have to get their stuff going right, Like I very much am not. I

very much am a rhythm player. Like That's why I'm super hyper diligent on my my shooting workouts every day, because if I go four days without doing my shooting workouts, my shot in my handle will fall apart. Like I am very much a rhythm player. I have to be super diligent about my work in order to be a good basketball player, and I think Julius Randall kind of

falls into that category. Like he just he needs to be playing, you know, twenty games in a row or so for him to kind of get into his groove and be the idealized version of himself, which is what he's doing right now. He's been healthy and he's been playing really well as a result. But like, I don't necessarily think that's the issue. They were literally you get anything out of Rando last year. You're in the conference finals, and like obviously you know, is this NIXT team capable

of reaching the Boston Milwaukee level. Probably not unless they make a trade, Right, But I'm just not necessarily sure Donovan Mitchell is the guy that I'd go after. First of all, I think he's just kind of redundant. I think he's the same type of player as Jalen Brunson, is a pick and roll scorer who can pass, but

is more of like a heliocentric pick and roll score. Right, as I've talked about a lot on this show, I look at like this ideal like archetype of a basketball team, right, you gotta have a skill guard, point of attack guard, tall lanky wing, strong power wing, athletic center that can switch. We were talking about Minnesota earlier. Minnesota fits that mold literally perfectly. It's like Mike Conley's your skill guard, answer

athletic point of attack guard. Jay McDaniel's your tall, slender forward. Carl Towns is your big, strong forward. Rudy Gobert's your athletic center that can switch and drop right. And I don't why would you make the same mistake the Cavs made and put another two small guards together that are redundant, right. I like the idea of having Jalen Brunson be the skill guard next to a point of attack elite a guard like off ball guard. To me, that's where r. J.

Barrett should be. What they need is they need a really good three, right. Julius Randall is your power forward that can attack matchups, and then ideally when you're healthy, it's Mitchell Robinson and Mitchell Robinson being hurt might be one of the best things that can happen to this team because it might stop them from doing something stupid

like going after Donovan Mitchell. In my opinion, you patiently wait to see who you can put it that three, because if I have Brunson Barrett with Randall Robinson in a really good three that is an elite shooter and that can guard multiple positions on the perimeter, now we're talking about a team that actually has a chance to go beat a team like Boston or Milwaukee in the playoffs. And so I think, like you know, Donovan Mitchell is going to be a guy that can help some teams.

I just am not sure that New York is the team that he can specifically help. I've seen, you know, a lot of people talking about them waiting on Embiid potentially that's another one that I would be I would think is smart, Like if you could upgrade Mitchell Robinson into Joel Embiid, you can get away with a lesser player at the three, maybe a veteran minimum type of guy. Right. But it's those two positions, the five in the three

that I'd be looking to upgrade, not the two. It's certainly not with a guy who more or less is a one, which is what you already have in Jayalen Brunson. And as you guys know, I think I think Jaylen Brunston is just better than Donovan Mitchell. I basically said that. Last year. I was like, I was, That's why I picked the Knicks to beat the Cavs. I was like, I think Brunson's gonna outplay Mitchell, and he did. So I just don't think that's the route they need to go.

All right, let's talk Lakers for a few minutes and then we'll get out of here. So what is wrong with the Lakers? They are one in four in their five games since the n season Tournament win, and they've looked bad, like really bad. And so the question is why have they looked bad? And I want to look at it from two fronts. So there's a big picture element and then there's some individual players that I want

to hit on in the big picture. This team, as I've talked about so much, their weapon is their defense. They're an elite defense in my opinion, when they are engaged, they are the best defense in the NBA, anchored by Anthony Davis when he's engaged, best defensive player in the world in my opinion, comfortably Lebron James when he's engaged, very very good low man help defender because he just has a ton of IQ in the athleticism to make

plays right when they have their wings slotted properly. Cam Reddish when he's playing like we're going to talk about Redish here in a minute, because he hasn't been playing well. Reddish at the point of tech, good weapon, Torrian Prince as a secondary point of attack of defender, good option right, and then you know Austin Reeves typically is you're one there. Austin just kind of does his job right. I think they're the best defense in the league when they're engaged.

Minnesota gives them a run for their money. But I just don't think Rudy Gobert is as good as Anthony Davis. But that team who won with defense, the same team that stopped the Pacers after the Bucks and Celtics could not, that team is giving up one hundred and twenty points per one hundred possessions in the five games since the nd season tournament. That's bad. They're not a bad defense, and they are playing bad defense. So that's a big part of it. Now, the question is why why are

they playing bad defense? Really, it just comes down to the schedule. You gotta think of it like this. By the end of December, the Lakers will have played twelve of their last nineteen games on the road, and in the middle of that was a stretch where they had to go to Vegas and play playoff games. Basically for a week, played three playoff games, one at home and two in Vegas. And so I think, honestly, there's just a little worn down. I think some of it's a

letdown too. Like think of it like this, like, what does the N Season Tournament win? Is it a trophy

like the Larry O'Brien. No, But what it is is a strong indicator that in big, meaningful basketball games, the Lakers are really damn good at that because of their physical nature and their defense and their ability to win rock fights and the level Lebron's playing at right now or at least before this stretch after the tournament, And when you combine that with like everything we know about the Lakers last year in the postseason, that N Season

Tournament win was like a legitimization of them as a bona fide championship contender. The problem is you have to turn around and play Dallas a couple nights later, right, and like that's where things can kind of go off the rails. Is it becomes from a motivational standpoint when you just kind of legitimized yourself and now you've got to go play these low, low intensity, low importance games. They let their foot off the gas in a lot of ways. And then you combine that with tough schedule,

right quality opponents, a lot of them on the road. Like, guys, the Chicago Bulls are playing really well lately. I want to say, they're like seven and three in their last ten games. They just went in and beat the Sixers the other night, and like, they gotta go on the road to Minnesota tonight. They're gonna lose. Lebron's out. Anthony Davis should rest tonight. I hope he does. They're gonna lose that game. Then on Saturday they gotta go to

Oklahoma City. There's a decent chance they lose that game too. But then they'll come home in January. It gets tough at the end of December two, they're home for the Celtics and then they have two more road games. But in January things will slow down. Hopefully they can recapture that. But again, we got to look at the Lakers in the big picture. I think they've been one of the best, one of the worst, I should say effort and energy

teams in the league this year. If you take out the seven in season tournament games, so the four pool play games, three single elimination games, basically all seven of those were really good start to finish Laker performances outside of that, because I think this team's won fifteen games. They're other eight wins the vast majority of those have been uneven efforts where they've come out slow, bs their way through two and a half quarters and then suddenly

engage themselves and come back and win late. That was literally, like, that's how they beat the Suns the first time. That's how they beat the Clippers the first time. That's how they beat the Magic the first time. That's what they do. That's what they do. So like, I'm not shocked anymore when I look at the scoreboard and they're down by thirteen points in the first half against the Bulls. It's

been somewhat their identity. You know, when a team that has to win through hard work because their best talent is their defensive potential. When that team doesn't play hard, they will get crushed. Those are the big picture elements. Now there's some individual players, because what ends up happening in a lot of these cases when a team is struggling, it usually involves a bunch of specific players struggling. Now, on the offensive end, their core three are playing great.

Anthony Davis thirty two points per game on sixty one or thirty one points per game on sixty one percent the last five games, Lebron twenty seven nine to eleven on forty eight percent, Austin Reeves twenty points and six assists on fifty one percent from the field, forty six percent from three to ninety two percent from the line.

So they're getting scoring from their core guys, and Anthony Davis has more or less been the great defensive player that we've come to expect, although he's clearly been laboring a little bit with his ankle injury, right, But everyone else is struggling, and even among those core guys, Lebron completely let go of the defensive rope since the end season tournament. Dominant lowman against the Pacers, dominant lowman against the Pelicans, could give a shit the last week and

a half, you know what I mean. And that's a fundamental part of defense. We talked about the low man, right, but there's a bunch of individual players that are struggling. Right. Cam Ruddish. Early in the season, when he was playing well, it was dedicated effort at at the point of attack, with fo focus on the game plan, with super selective offense. He was just taking wide open corner threes and that was about it. Cam Reddish has really struggled in the

last five games. He's way loose on defense compared to where he was earlier, a lot of gambling, a lot of like stunting and getting out of position. Really really struggled with Jalen Brunson the other night. Cam's not playing very good on defense. Then on offense he's gone back to a lot of what he did in the past, which is like taking early clock pull up a threes in transition above the break and driving into traffic and trying to do too much just in general a quick trigger.

And so now Cam Reddish has gone from an impactful three and D guy or D and three guy to something below that. Right, Torrian Prince has been shooting the ball better, but he's struggling on the defensive end of the floor and he's not doing anything to help on

the class. D'Angelo Russell is like completely checked out mentally, thirty four percent from the field, twenty two percent from three since the n Season tournament ended, and he's just floating through games on the defensive end of the floor. Jared Vanderbilt looks like he's still hurt. He's not moving well. And then again, and this is an important part of this is the rotation piece. But Ruey doesn't look like

he fits in right now. Now. One of the things I want to say is Jared Vanderbilt and Ruyachimura, they're combining in the last five games to play thirty eight minutes per game. Torrian Prince by himself is playing thirty six minutes per game. And I think a big like Torrian Prince is a guy that used to come off the bench and play in a limited role, and Darvin Ham is leaned into him as a high minutes starter, which is like, of course, his point of attack, defense

is gonna struggle. Of course, he's gonna struggle on the defensive glass. Of course he's gonna have games like he did against the Knicks where he goes three for thirteen from three. He's not accustomed to this. Workload to just go look at his minutes totals in the last three years before the Lakers and now later in his career when he's an older player and less athletic, Darvin Ham's leading on him in huge minutes and it's just not necessary when you have other options there. That's the one

big tactical thing that sticks out to me here. It's just a lot of Cam Reddishatorian prints when you have other options like Jared Vanderbilt, like Max Christy, like ruiy Hachimura, that you can slot into those positions. And I do think that balancing that out more could help everybody. But all those guys are playing poorly. Again, like when you have three of your starters, Cam Redistorium, Prince and Dangelo Russell playing poorly, that's gonna lead to some bad basketball.

And again, why are these guys playing poorly? I think they're a little worn down. A lot of road games, weird four three, you know, playoff style games mixed in a little bit of a letdown after you win the damn thing. No chance to just go home and get into a routine. Look at their January schedule, their January schedules. It enlightens up a lot of games at home, a lot of easier opponents. That's when I think you'll see the Lakers kind of click in and start to regain

some ground in the regular season standings. But I will admit one thing, like I was never down, no matter how poorly things got at the beginning of the season or in this last week and a half, I've never been down on the Lakers championship potential. If anything, I'm higher on it because Lebron looks better and I think they're positioned for a trade, and we'll talk about the trade here in a minute. But like, I'm just not off of that boat. I was wrong about one thing though.

I said in the offseason that I thought the Lakers would win fifty games and just in general win a lot of regular season games because they just have a lot of talent and they'll just be able to get through the regular season riding that talent night in a night out. And I thought they'd be able to weather

injuries to Len and Anthony Davis, which haven't happened yet. Really, I was wrong about that in the sense that they have not been a consistently engaged team, and like, just go look at the NBA standings, look through and look at how many teams are good. There's like nineteen good teams and then there's like ten or eleven bad teams. And so as a result of that, on the night out nature of the NBA, if you don't bring solid effort and energy and focus, you get your butt kicked.

It's just how it goes. And so honestly, like I view this as like a forty five win team now, a team that just kind of hovers around five hundred and then at the end of the season will end up, you know, five to six seven games above five hundred. And that's just simply from the standpoint of effort. This is a team that they're low man. Lebron James barely tries on defense, you know, in any game that unless it has some sort of degree of importance, and which

by the way, doesn't matter for the postseason. Lebron is consistently a guy that can make plays on that end when he gets there. But in the context of the regular season it's an issue and they're just not. They just have too many guys playing poorly right now. Last piece, I said before the season that I expected ruy Hachamura and d'angela Russell to get traded, but that D'Angelo Russell in particular was the safest bet in the NBA to

get traded. And I said specifically, because those are two of your top five players, the top five players in the Lakers or Lebron, James, Anthony Davis, Austin Reeves, Ruyachamura, Dangel Russell, those are your top five guys. Except for Lebron and Ruey play the same position. Delo and Austin more or less play the same position, skill guard, right, And as we've talked about, if you have skill guard

skill guard, your defense falls apart. It has to be skill guard, point of attack defender that can shoot the ball right that that that's what your backcourt has to be. And what you're seeing right now is D'Angel Russell's playing really poorly and starting to kind of hate his role on this team in a lot of ways, which is, you're the guy who starts the game, but we don't want you running the offense, and Austin's gonna come in and take the reins from you and end up closing

the game anyway. Not D'Angelo Russell's fault, not Darvin Ham's fault. That is a roster in balance that has been abundantly clear since the Nuggets series last year, right, and then Ruey Hachimura. You know, like, I don't think it's a coincidence that in that Spurs game Lebron didn't play last week, he looked good because he does the same stuff Lebron does. He is the same lesser He's a lesser version of the same player, a big matchup attacking forward who needs

to play as a low man defensively. And so when you have both of them together and one of them's playing thirty six minutes, there's just not a ton of opportunity for Ruey Hachimura. And like last year in the postseason when he was great, they were playing him a lot at the three next to Lebron and Ad and he was playing with good players and getting a lot of catch and shoot opportunities, which he was making. Now he's pretty consistently playing in bench groups without their best players.

They're tossing in the in the block and asking him to initiate offense, which is not his strength, and then his defense is suffering as a result of that. You know, it's funny because like I'm a huge Ruie fan. I think he's a good playoff player too, but there's a redundancy here, and that's where it becomes a problem. I don't know necessarily that Rui will get moved. That will basically depend on the target. But Danzel the russell will

almost certainly get moved because of that imbalance. And then we look at the two inside guys. If we agree that the big picture version of this team is Austin is your skill guard, Ada is the primary rim protector, Lebron is the low man. It's the two and the three that will round out that lineup, and that five, whatever that five ends up being, will determine the fate of this team. Cam Reddish, it was a cool story when he played really well for a couple of weeks.

He will have other stretches this season where he plays really well for a couple of weeks, and then I'll have other stretches like the last couple of weeks where he's loose, in, undisciplined and his hacked craters. That's gonna be the experience of writing a young flawed player at the two. Torrian Prince very good bench wing, and when he's coming off the bench for you and playing twenty something minutes a night, He's gonna be a really useful

player for you. Good catch and shoot player, decent point of attack defender against lower level perimeter talent. But when you slought him as a starter and he's guarding a lot of the higher level perimeter talent, you can run into some issues there. And so I keep pointing to the same situation. You have to find a way to turn your two players that are redundancies that you can't play in Ruy and Dilo into upgrades at the two and three between Austin Lebron and Ad. And again it

depends on the player. I wouldn't do it for anybody, but you know, if you can, if you can call the bulls and somehow get you know, Caruso Ford lo in a first in other South, you gotta do that. If you can call the Brooklyn Nets and be like, hey, ruey Hotchramura, You guys don't really have a big forward. You guys have a bunch of skinny forwards. You have Dorian Finney Smith and Michal Bridges and Cam Johnson. They're

all more or less skinny fords. You don't really have a big forward that can attack smaller players in the post. Why don't we try a swap there, you know, then then you can run Dorian Finney Smith and Alex Cruso at the two three. Now you're talking about a lineup that can win the championship. But right now, that's that's why I keep them at the bottom of that tier. Like they the regular season stuff mostly effort, mostly effort focused. This is an older team in terms of their stars.

That's gonna be something that's gonna lead to problems there. But when he comes to the postseason, it's the weakness at the two and three that concerns me the most. But do keep an eye on. I expect the Lakers to struggle through the end of the year, and I wouldn't surprised if we get to January they're below five hundred, and then I expect them to win a bunch of games in January because their schedule lightens up at the

and they're at home for the most part. So I think by the time we get to the deadline, they'll be, you know somewhere three four or five games above five hundred, and if they nail those trades, they can go on a little run post deadline, end up closer to fifty

wins and have a better chance. But my guess they'll I have no idea what's gonna happen to the deadline, but at this point, I think the safer bet is for them to be a middle of the pack Western Conference team who finishes with forty something to wins and just adjust your expectations, Laker fans, adjust your expectations. This is not a team that is interested in overly engaging themselves over the course of the regular season. All right, guys, that is all I have for today. We have one

more show tomorrow. We're gonna do some instant reactions to some games and our MVP check in and a mailbag, so keep dropping mail back questions. I will see you guys. Then the volume