Midseason Mailbag

and so obviously this break is kind of strange. So we're gonna be getting away from some of the Twitter spaces. I'm gonna be doing a mail bag pod today. A bunch of you asked some really good questions and I appreciate that. And then probably on either Saturday or Sunday, Rog and I will get together again to do something along those lines, whether it's mail bag, whether it's some midseason awards stuff, whether it's some you know, trade ideas

for the Lakers or something along those lines. Not really sure what we'll do. We'll figure something out to do over the weekend, and then obviously we will have our normal postgame show tomorrow night after the Lakers Clippers game, and again on Tuesday. Um, but we're gonna We're gonna dive straight into the mail back. We're only gonna go for about thirty minutes today, so it'll be nice and short and easy. The first question I got was from

Nicholas Quick. Uh did you hear cowherds take yesterday that the Sons are the team for now in the next five years? The Lakers are old and poorly constructed, chopped deliver. What's your response? Um, you know, first of all, Laker fans have to come to terms with the fact that this team has opened themselves up to slander and that's just part of the deal. Um, they've played themselves into

this situation. There are other teams that have done the same thing that Laker fans have taken advantage of in sent years. A lot of you probably had a lot to say about the Warriors over the last couple of years and in their uh predicament that they were in. But if you talk to somebody in the Warriors fan base, I'm sure they would tell you, like, we believe that when Clay gets back, and when we get some veterans around step instead of some of these young players, we

believe it's going to get better. They have their optimism. They see the light at the end of the tunnel, just like we do. We see, you know, hey, Lebron is gonna come back. The guys are starting to play harder. Trevor Rees is coming back, which fills like a direct need and the roster. This effort is the first time we really are seeing consistent buy in this entire season. We see the light at the end of the tunnel.

So we believe in what this team can be. But people outside, people outside of our fan base, have every right to look at us and kick us while we're down, so to speak, in terms of Laker fans in the Laker team in general, and we just kind of have to live with that and understand that that's just how this works. Um. As far as Cowherd particular take, he's not wrong in the sense that if you're looking at the picture right now, it appears that Phoenix is in

a much better position. You know. They He talks a lot about how they do have They are built for now and for the future. They do have a lot of really exciting young pieces. Michail Bridges reminds me a lot of Tashaun Prince, like a better offensive version of Tashaun Prince, just in the sense that he's this incredibly long wing that causes problems for basically every perimeter player in the league. DeAndre Ayton projects to be an all

star level center in this league. We know what Devin Booker and Chris Paul are capable of, and it's easy to kind of draw a line between this is Chris Paul's potential decline and this is DeAndre Ayton and Michael bridges potential ascent. So it's easy to see like this team is gonna be relevant for a really long time, and they are. I would argue that because he said that, you know, in his take, he said that the Lakers had zero of their ten top ten players that are

in their prime. I would disagree with that. Anthony Davis is very much in his prime. Th h t is not in his prime now, but he will be sometime in the next five years. The Lakers do have a lot more flexibility and a lot more potential for the future than people think. Um. The other thing too is payroll flexibility. The Lakers don't have any long contracts tying them up, so they have a lot of flexibility moving forward. Yes,

next season, You've got Russ on the books. That makes some things complicated for the next season, but after that, other than Lebron and a d it's pretty much wide open outside of th h T. So this team is built in a way that they can retool year after year. That said, yes, they're very much invested in this two year window, so it's easy to get discouraged with how it looks here because they don't have a ton of

flexibility strictly within these next two years. That's fair. What I would say is all the things that I've been saying in recent pods about them trending in the right direction, the effort is better. Help is on the way. In terms of the role players, Kendrick Nunn, it would be better than most of the guards that the Lakers are playing right now. Trevor Reasa is a forward that just doesn't exist on the roster in terms of a role player,

those things will absolutely help. The Lakers do have a little bit of trade flexibility, which we'll talk about later. But the point is is there there Things aren't as dire as they appear. But from the outside looking in, wouldn't you rather be the Suns right at this exact moment in time with the way things look. That's that's

that's not exactly the most outlandish take. Now where where I would personally choose the Lakers over the Suns has to do with the idea of a ceiling, And this is a concept that is kind of convoluted because it's hard to It's hard to justify using a ceiling as the as the silver lining or as the light at the end of the tunnel when so much of this is regular season basketball and playoff basketball. Before you get to that point, the Suns look fantastic all year. Last

year they look fantastic. In the first round, they look fantastic, and second round they look fantastic. In the third round, they look fantastic for two games in the NBA Finals, and then guess what happened? Milwaukee, because of their elite high end talent and Janice, We're able to hit a ceiling as a team that Phoenix could not touch and they lost four straight times. And during that time there were some really good punches from Phoenix Game four, really

good punch. Devin Booker got really hot a couple of times in that stretch and showed some shot making that could have gotten them over the top, but it just wasn't enough. The ceiling for Milwaukee is higher than the ceiling for Phoenix considerably, and it costs them a championship.

And so the way I would look at it, you know, I was talking about the Laker championship odds the other day, I remember, and one of the things I pointed out was like, you know, yeah, it's easy to say, why would the Lakers have Some sports books have them at fourth and some sports books have them closer to six or seventh, depending on where you look. But like, the reason why it's still a reasonably decent bet to bet on the Lakers is because Lebron and a d can

reach a ceiling that these other teams can't reach. Most of these teams can't reach. Brooklyn can reach that ceiling potentially, you know, Milwaukee can reach that ceiling potentially. Golden State if Steph gets going, can can reach that ceiling. But a lot of these teams, like Phoenix and like Utah, they just don't have that super super high end talent that can match those peak peak guys in those biggest moments That significantly limits their ceiling. So where I would

disagree with Colin is. I would say, if you're the Lakers, you have the two best players in that series, like absolutely no question. So even if the Suns have the best system ever, and even if the Suns have really good habits that they've established all season long, and even if Chris Paul and Devin Booker played to their best, ability if Lebron and A D played to their best, you might lose. As a matter of fact, we saw that last year. We saw a limited version of Lebron

coming off of an ankle injury. We saw Anthony Davis a few games removed um achilles tend to tend to tend to noses or tending to pathi or whatever the heck they called it, and Anthony Davis still couldn't make a jump shot. Um The entire Laker corps of role players went ice cold from three. They had absolutely no

space to operate. And guess what happened. Lebron and A D physically overwhelmed Phoenix, and they won back to back games, and they were up two games to one, and they were clowning the Suns in the first half of Game four, throwing lobs off the backboard and stuff, until Anthony Davis pulled his growing and then at that point, because the team has all of their talent tied up in those two players, the wheels came off, and that was to

be expected. But at the end of the day, if I'm looking at this situation as long as I have, even even with them declining apparently with Anthony Davis trending down into the bottom half of that top ten and Lebron as well, it's still is of higher ceiling potential than what you get with the Phoenix or with the Utah or teams teams in that tier or like Miami is another good example of that. Um So, from that standpoint, if you're a Laker fan like it always could be

a heck of a lot worse. But again, like I said at the beginning, let's not let's not discount the feelings of those outside of our fan base, because they're well warranted. This Laker team has played an incredibly weak schedule to start the season in their twelve and eleven So, I mean, are is anybody really wrong in in the in the stuff that they're saying that was that that would be my little caveat there alright? How many days this is from Dre Dave how many days before DeAndre

Jordan gets removed from this roster. Strategy of hiding DeAndre Jordan behind first unit players was understood DJ is unplayable with the second unit players because they lacked the skills to hide DJ. So the DeAndre Jordan thing I talked a lot about this in the last part is one of the more interesting phenomena that I've seen in recent

history in the NBA. Because you know, like I, I've been slandered relentlessly for this specific take because of the fact that I said that I actually liked the DJ signing over the summer. Now, I've tried to explain that as best as possible, Like I saw him as an end of the bench center, a guy who would only play when Dwight Navy rested, not as a guy who would be the starter for this group. I saw him as a guy who would be able to maintain scheme consistency.

You could run drop coverage with Dwight and a D and essentially when one of them is out, rather than having to change your scheme the way you had to sometimes with the Montrez Harrald, you could just do the same thing with DeAndre Jordan's have that scheme consistency to carry you for one or two nights in the regular season and then subbing back out. I never saw him

as that type of player. Now, obviously, in my little diet tribe over the summer, I said that I saw him as a athletic primarily defensive center in terms of the archetype. And just for the record, guys, I've done over a hundred episodes of this stuff. You don't think occasionally I slip up with my words and use a little bit of hyperbole and exaggerate a little bit and maybe put my foot in my mouth. Sometimes that's happened

more than once. I promise you, if you go back and listen to all that junk that I said over the course of last year, you're gonna find stupid stuff that I said. That's the nature of the of what this is. That's the nature of podcasting. So if you want to rub that in my face, be my guest.

I can take it. But essentially, what's been interesting about this is I also anticipated that Brooklyn, in their poor defensive identity and their tendency to switch rather than run a drop coverage, would lead to DeAndre Jordan's looking better with the Lakers. Why Because they're a drop coverage team and for the last two seasons they've had an amazing defensive identity and Frank, even with limited defensive players, people forget Avery Bradley was trending way down defensively before he

signed with the Laker. Kyle Kuzma was viewed as a bad defensive player before Frank got his hands on him. K CP was viewed as an okay defensive player. A lot of these guys were were has massively outperformed what their defensive expectations were under Frick coming into this season.

So I allowed that to make me optimistic about plugging DeAndre in with this group as opposed to that Brooklyn group, running a scheme that actually makes sense with what he does, and having a group of guys that would, you know, commit to that with him, and that he would look

better than he did in Brooklyn. That's what I was expecting and where I was obviously way wrong is this team just completely punted their defensive identity from day one of training camp and from the top down, including Lebron and a b have mostly mailed that end of the floor in So, of course DeAndre is gonna look terrible. That's just the reality of the situation. So I mean, that's that's just my two cents on that take from the summer. And again, yeah, I was wrong about some

stuff with that. I failed to anticipate Frank and the way he would use him in the rotation. I failed to anticipate the way the team would fall apart defensively outside of DeAndre. Guys, when they were in drop coverage with Anthony Davis. This season, it has looks terrible outside of specific stretches of games. That's that's just the reality of this team. So it's not fair to put all

of that on DeAndre. That said, I get just as annoyed as you guys when he's on the floor because I don't think he should be unless a break class in case of emergency, here's an injury, here's the rest day, we need to use him. That was what I always saw with DeAndre. Now, as far as cutting him, goes back to the question. You know, DeAndre has to inevitably over the course of the next few weeks if Frank does what we hope you will do, which is bench

Jim Hays, who embraced the bench roll. You know, we saw that little video of the altercation. I think it was on Pickup Hoops Twitter page where they seem to get into it Frank and DJ on the sideline if DJ, if Frank opts to take DJ out of the rotation, and that's DJ's behavior, that's the way he chooses to act. Yeah, you gotta cut him. You can't have a a realistic championship goal and have a really, really unhappy player in the locker room that's constantly messing with your team chemistry.

You can't have that. But my guess is what will happen is because you do need d Guys. We need DJ as an end of the bench center. We need him in case a D goes down for a couple of weeks, because if a D goes down for a couple of weeks, there's no guarantee that Dwight can handle all of it. At the end of the day, DJ is needed. He's just miscast in his role. Okay, I know everyone says, let's play j Huff, but guys, there's a reason why he wasn't on a roster coming into

this season. If J Huff was playing every single minute that DJ was playing, you guys would be slandering him too, because he's probably a fringe NBA player, and so if you play a fringe NBA player against good NBA teams, he's not gonna look great all the time. That's just the reality of how this stuff works. So, yes, if DJ becomes a problem for the chemistry, you have to cut him and try to work around that sign someone else. But hopefully you move him to the bench. He embraces that.

A lot of the guys in that locker room are friends with him from Team USA and from other basketball related engagements. You want him on the team, You just need him to be in his proper role. Alright. Moving on, who's a realistic target for the deadline slash buyout? So the reality is of the Lakers are not very flexible right now. Um, they basically have one trade piece and that's Taylor Horton Tucker, and they have one other player that they can use a salary filler, and that's Kendrick Nunn.

Those two players get you to right around sixteen million, okay, So realistically you're looking at players within within a couple million of twenty million dollars is like your cap for what you can trade for buyouts? Are tough. You never

really know what to expect in the buyout market. It's a lot easier to get a feel for that sort of thing as we get closer to that time in the season, and quite frankly, guys like there are guys out there that have the time to comb through every single roster and make phone calls to exact and try to get a feel for who might be a buyout candidate.

That's not what I have time for. With everything that I have on my play as a coach and as a real estate agent and doing this, I have time to really really focus on Laker basketball games in a handful of other big games around the league. But there are better places for you to go for, you know, checklists of different buyout guys that that might be available that that come that time of year. As far as the trade candidates go, the one that I have my

biggest eye on is Jeremy Grant. And I've talked about this in previous podcasts, But the thing with Jeremy Grant is, you know, I've seen him in the playoffs and what he's capable of. Yeah, did Lebron have his way with him in a lot of ways. Of course, Bill Lebron has his way with the vast majority perimeter defenders in the league. He did a pretty damn good job on Kawhi Leonard in the bubble. He is a good shooter, not a great shooter, but a good shooter and a

guy who can put the ball on the floor. He's capable of that advanced closeout attacking that I always talked about that, Okay, they rotate to the rim and they chase you off the three point line off of a skip pass. What can you do to create offense in

that situation. We're getting a lot of this from the Leak Monk this year, that in between stuff that, Okay, they chased him off the line, he ripped through the baseline, ripped through the middle, and he makes a tough floater, or he makes a pull up ten footer, or he makes a layup, but it's a contested layup where he contorts his body around the guy and finishes on the other side of the rim. That's advanced close out attacking. We're not gonna get any of that from Trevor Ariza.

What we're gonna get from Trevor Easa is really really solid individual defense and really really solid team defense at the wing position with some size versatility. That's true. But Jeremy Graham as an athlete and what he's capable of on the defensive end is another level or another tier above that. And then offensively, he's a guy that in the playoffs can have games re scores twenty points. And so I like him as a as the ideal target

because he's at a healthier salary. We're not looking at trying to go after a Harrison Barnes that's up around twenty five million or whatever. We're looking at a guy who's right at twenty million. We can flip Kendrick Nunn and th h T for him and bring him in. And it's this obvious, clear ceiling raising move with our

core five man line up. Our core five man lineup, which is another question that we're gonna get to in a minute, which will address, you know, in a in a world where we don't have Jeremy Grant, but our core five man line up is gonna send around Lebron, a d and Russ some kind of forward in some kind of guard. And so that forward right now is probably gonn be Trevor a Resa. But if you upgrade

that to Jeremy Grant. That's a huge upgrade. Not to mention, Jeremy Grant can defend up and down a position, so you can even go wild and play Jeremy Grant and Trevor a Resa in that lineup and have a ton of length of versatility. There's a lot of potential for ceiling raising lineups if you add Jeremy Grant to the mix. And I also just think it's a very realistic trade, uh, in terms of both sides being interested. Detroit through a

bunch of money at Jeremy Grant. They threw it because they were in a situation where they didn't really have any sort of obvious pending contending season in the future, right because they're just basically a perennial lottery team. They've got killing in Hayes that they just picked up in the lottery, they just got Kid Cunningham. They're they're they're not really in a position where throwing twenty million dollars a year or two player cap straps them. So it

was like an easy little money investment for them. It's money they had to spend, doesn't hurt the team, doesn't hurt their future, flexibility, gives a guy that they can run the offense through while these young guys are developing. It was an easy move for them. But that said, Detroit is not invested in Jeremy Grant in their future. He's not part of their long term vision for what they're doing with the team. So Jeremy Grant is there to be had, and he only has one more year

on that deal. So th HT that is an obvious fit as a guy that a team could use to project forward with their their development window, with their rebuilding window. Not to mention, Kay Cunningham projects to be a guy who can eventually guard twos and threes, and th h T, as we've seen, can guard threes and fours because of how strong he is. And again, when you're when you're talking about position, it's all about who you can guard,

not what you do offensively. Th h T projects within the next five years to be able to be a guy who can defend one through four and a guy who can hold his own and post mismatches, and a guy who can offensively be a slasher in the same way that a small forward or any sort of stretch forward would be. So he's a guy that is an obvious fit alongside Killy and Hayes and Kake Kan cunning him,

and he's a very clear investment in the future. So if you're the if you're the Pistons and like you get a chance to flip Jeremy Grant for a player like th HT who has the potential to be an All Star within the next five years with all of his physical tools and everything that he brings to the table, what's a no brainer. And if you're the Lakers, you believe in th HT, you know what he can do for you now and in the future. But the reality is is he's not a fantastic fit right now with

this championship window. He's not a You're not there's a diminishing return there. What the Lakers are getting from th h T right now on a championship contending team does not match up with what his value is elsewhere in the league. So from that standpoint, it's the perfect time to trade him. You of an opportunity to cash in a piece that other people think is more value valuable

than it is to you in this moment. But it's it's just to me, it's it's kind of like a perfect case of a trade that makes sense for both sides. We'll see, as is always the case, Like you just don't know what's going on in the Laker front office. Like it's like we're about to talk about Frank Vogel in a minute. I don't know. I don't know what the internally, what the team is thinking about Frank. I don't know if Lebron and a d or trashing him

in a group chat. I don't know if Rob and Genie are having conversations about firing him, or if they're all on board and we're all in our own heads about this stuff. We don't we don't know. We're all guessing at this point. And that's the same. The same thing goes with th h T. We don't know if they're completely invested in th HT would never in a

million years consider trading him. They think he's the future, or if it was like, hey, we're gonna sign him to a three year, thirty million dollar deal, and the idea is if he fits with this group, great, If not, we're trading him. We don't know. And there's obviously the clutch element in there as well, But Jeremy Grant is

my favorite trade target going into the deadline. What do you think it will take for Anthony Davis to take over and play like the number one option for the Lakers on a consistent basis if you won't do it now with Lebron's availability issues this season, and I don't know if you'll ever get there. He's twenty eight. Lebron is about to be thirty seven. That question is from Rob.

So I've talked a lot about this on previous pods, But Anthony Davis will never be what you want him to be if you're trying to get him to be like Lebron can be for a team. He's just not that archetype of player. This is one of the big reasons why, you know, I was thinking about maybe doing a top ten podcast today and I opted for the mail bag instead. But when I was thinking about that, I went back and listened to my top ten lists that I did about about two years ago. Just about

two years ago, eighteen months ago. I can't even remember. It was right after the bubble, so yeah, wow, that's only like thirteen fourteen months ago. It's not that long ago.

But anyway, in that pod, I talked a lot about how that do you guys remember after Janice in the Bucks got eliminated by Miami and the bubble, there was a lot of talk about trying to convert Janice into a center, this idea that he was miscast as a perimeter initiator, and we all kind of reached out a conclusion because of watching him perpetually dribble the ball up and be completely neutered in half court by defenses that

packed the paint. Now, in that podcast, in that top ten podcast that I did forever Go, I pushed back against that and I said the Bucks were smart to invest in Janice as a perimeter initiator because your potential value as a superstar in this league is infinitely higher as a guy who can bring the ball up the floor and initiate from the perimeter than it is is

a guy who needs to be set up. And I was proven right about that, and the Bucks were rewarded on that investment when Janice became unstoppable in last year's playoff run and it held up the Larry O'Brian Trophy Janice.

That investment in that area of Janice's game was the difference between him being what many consider to be the best player in the world right now and a guy who's in that same tier with a d you know, like incredibly good in many nights, looks like the best player on the floor, but just not the same as those top guys when they really have it going. And

that's the situation with Anthony Davis. His inability to persistently initiate offense from the perimeter perimeter with a live dribble significantly hinders his ceiling, and so because of that, you're never going to get him to be Lebron, so to speak, the guy who can be the engine of a team night in and night out and carry you for long stretches when Lebron is out with injury. It's just not

something he's capable of now. In fairness to Anthony Davis, I'm not sure that he ever could have been that because an underrated part of Janice's game is his foot speed, both laterally, straight line, first step, all of that stuff, long steps, those like really heavy hamstring steps that used

to see Dwyane Wade do all the time. He does all the time that we gather the ball att and somehow get all the way to the rim, and like two steps that those are all areas of Janice's athleticism that are significantly higher than Anthony Davis's athleticism, So it's not really realistic to compare the two of them. Anthony Davis has a great handle, so I'm not necessarily convinced that it's not something that they've tried and it's just not worked for him because of his lack of foot speed. So,

but that's that's the thing. If Laker fans, you're setting yourself up for disappointment if you want Anthony Davis to eventually become that guy, because I just don't think he's physically capable of that, uh in any time, and he's already twenty eight. Like the like the question asked, you know, when you're building around him moving forward, if you're looking at this from a five year window, kind of getting back to that first question we had, you know, you're

constantly retooling around him. Right, So Lebron rejects as he ages to be a slower player, for sure, but that doesn't mean he can't be a perimeter initiator. He absolutely can come up the floor and run offense. We've seen in tons of times in NBA history really really big slow forward to be able to run offense We've seen that with Kedo Turkoglue with the Orlando Magic. You know, like that the Spurs used to do this a lot with bores d O. You can use big, slow players

as playmakers. Playmakers, guys that can put the ball on the floor and get guys into positions. So I'm not worried about Lebron being able to do that. Projecting forward, when you're building around that, though, you just target Anthony

Davis's weaknesses. That's why they went after us. Part of the reason why they were so good in Sacramento the other night is your ability to have this high end perimeter initiator next to Anthony Davis playing at his best, and so that that's kind of the way that I projected. You know, if you get to the point where Russ is done and you don't want Russ anymore, and he goes and signs somewhere else, maybe you'll get lucky you signed him at a discount to stay with the lake Yrs.

But you have an opportunity to look at the landscape of the league and primarily focused on perimeter initiators, guys that can get Anthony Davis. Is Anthony Davis into his spots at that point you can potentially extend this window in moving forward. That's one of the reasons why it maybe if he for the Laker front office to let go of th h T as I'm sure they're hoping that by the time th h T turns twenty four and Lebron is forty, that th h T can kind

of slide into that spot. You know. That's that's where you get your best opportunity with when you're cap strapped to have that type of player is when it's in house, when it's from the draft, because you just have more flexibility to go over the cap to bring those kinds of guys in. But Anthony Davis is always going to need that kind of player. He's never gonna be able to be honest, And the sooner that we all understand that, the more realistic we can be projecting forward with Anthony

Davis on this team. All right, Next question, moving on to Frank Vogel. If Vogel was to get sacked, who would you want to replace him? Including external coaches? Thanks, This is from M so I have come around to not wanting to fire Frank for the time being. Now this is like a horse race. This thing is constantly sliding back and forth, and we're always adjusting and responding

to new information. During the ugliest parts of this season, you know, namely after the Sacramento loss and triple overtime, we you know, there were a ton of problems with the Lakers. They had a lot of issues. Frank was just one of those issues. The reason why I advocated firing for Frank at that point was I saw him as the only real fixable issue, right, Like, the Lakers don't have the roster flexibility to make significant changes to UH,

to line up versatility. You know. The only thing they can do there is hope Trevor Reason gets back, you know, and hope Kendrick Nunn gets back. They can't even trade th h t intil the middle of December, so there's just not a lot of flexibility on that front. Talking about like, oh, we need more defensive guards, Okay, that's great, but what you can't You can't get any more defensive guards unless they're currently outside of the league, which means

they're probably not that good. Okay. And then the same goes for you know, trying to get UH, you know, Frank to not play DeAndre Jordan or something like that that all all of those problems could only be fixed. The only fixable, like actual actionable item that the Lakers could go to was firing Frank, and the reason why I supported that at that point in time had to do with buy in. I saw Lebron and a D not caring about this season nearly as much as they

did in the previous two seasons. It was blatant to anybody who was paying attention. Yes there was scheme stuff, Yes there were lineup stuff, Yes there was injury stuf off, but Lebron and a D also weren't bought in, and as I've seen with Lebron in the past, a coaching change has the potential to invigorate him in that regard.

It's whether it's because they need a new voice or just the chaos of it all breeds urgency, I'm not sure, But for whatever reason, it appeared that those two guys weren't bought in, and so I thought firing Frank, even though he's not the only reason why this season went off the rails, would be a good opportunity to try to light a fire under Lebron and a D well in the last two games. Obviously, Lebron missing the last

one with COVID, the stars have been fantastic. In that game against the Pistons at home, Lebron and a D were unbelievable on both ends of the floor physically, uh actually attempting to use their physical tools. Two bully teams on both sides of the floor. And then Anthony Davis looked like he was the best player in the world

candidate the other night in Sacramento. So if that's turning around, if the guys are buying back in, then I would want to stick with Frank because I think in the long run, what he can get out of this team

defensively is more important for the ceiling of this team. Now, with we've talked a lot about how that has to be within an offensive context, right, Like, he needs to bring the most defensively out of our best offensive players in hopes of kind of building that identity that you know that we saw in the second half against Sacramento. That's what we need to build towards. But Frank is

the best guy for that specific job. Now, let's say uh, the like Lebron and a D are back in the lineup in the next couple of weeks and they both are playing fantastic on both ends of the floor, but Frank just continues to be completely offensively and apt and it starts costing his games, whether that's through DJ or just you know, a bunch of really really poor concepts, and even though Lebron and d are trying, it's just not king. If that's the case. I like Mike D'Antoni.

I think he's an obvious fit in terms of the identity of this team as a running up and down the floor type of team, as a team that will lean heavily into their offensive talent. Most importantly, as we've seen with him in Houston, he is the ideal five out coach. So you know, five outs all about spacing.

The one of the biggest things that's been frustrating about this Laker team is you'll see Lebron or a D post up on the wing or on the block, and when they do, rather than going to a five out spacing concept, especially with Anthony Davis because he doesn't feel comfortable having a person behind him because he doesn't like having to watch his backside, they'll have to cram all four other players on half of the floor, and so what inevitably ends up happening is you'll have a even

when they go small, you'll have a guard sitting in the dunker spot, which actively undercuts the point of going small to begin with. And so what's great about Mike D'Antoni is he's really really well versed in five out

offensive concepts. He will be the best guy to give Lebron a D and Russ isolation sets where all four guys are properly spaced on the floor in positions where they can shoot so that there's not a body in the paint, or if there is a body in the paint, there's an easy swing pass available to make the team pay. He nailed this down in Houston, especially after the Capella trade.

The Lakers, if they lean into playing small and having a lot of Anthony Davis and Lebron at center, can play basically a five out scheme like Houston did, and so Mike D'Antoni would be the perfect guy for that

type of job. Then you just hope that at the highest Mike D'Antoni is probably gonna lean heavily into switching, which would be great on defense, and even if it's not the best defensive scheme, that you've ever seen, like we've seen in the past with Frank Lebron in a DS, physical ability raises the ceiling of that defense nificantly compared

to what Mike could have done in Houston. So again, don't want to fire Frank right now because I was only interested in firing him to try to light a fire under Lebron in a D and right now they seem to be trending in that right direction. So I would keep Frank, but things go off the rails again. If the group does decide the front office and Jeannie decide to fire Frank, I would look in the direction of Mike D'Antoni. Right. Okay, this is the last question.

This is from Chenny Britt. How should a guy like th h T approaches outside shooting struggles. It seems like he's put in a lot of work into his jumper, in his form and his free throw percentage are both good. What's the next step for translating that into a better

on court percentage? So not to get into the weeds of shooting coaching here, Um, but shooting is is such a fickle thing because it's a it's a low percentage task, even on your best, even when you're at your best right, Like if we look at you know, there are a handful of guys in NBA history that I've had seasons where they get over and you know, they knocked down fifty three o the threes or something along those lines.

But for the most part, like even if you're a really really good shooter, you miss more than you make. So it's a really really hard thing to figure out mentally, especially for a young player, when you don't really know how to contextualize your misses and understand that that's just kind of part of the game. I think THHD projects to be a really good shooter because he's a really good shooter at the free throw line. The reason why is the free throw line is the static situation of shooting.

The free throw line is the best indicator of your touch. I don't think it's a coincidence that Lebron is a very inconsistent shooter from the perimeter because he's inconsistent at the free throw line. I don't think it's a coincidence that outside of a couple of really bad shooting games this year, Lebron is shot pretty well from three and also is having a good season from the free throw line. Because his touch this particular season is better. He's doing

well in that regard. Um. You know, we I've talked in the past about Lebron's form. I'm not gonna get into it right now, but th HD has a really really good, solid base, and he's got good touch, and he's got big hands. Big hands are important for shooting.

I know it sounds crazy. You think of a lot of the centers in NBA history who have shot poorly because there because a lot of people think it's because of their big hands, But there are so many players in NBA history with big hands that have shot great, So I think it's kind of a cop out excuse. When you have big hands on the basketball, it actually helps you to avoid left right misses. It's actually a form thing that I teach kids, and then I had a coach teach me when I was in junior college.

Spreading your fingers further out around the ball help you stay in line with your shooting stroke. It makes it a focus on distance rather than left to right. So th h T projects to be a really good shooter, as in the sense that he's got huge hands, he's got a really strong base. It'll help, it'll be easier for him to stay on balance. In the long run, I do believe we'll see him be a really good shooter.

He's struggling now. Why is that? I think it has a lot to do with shot selection and inconsistent role. He started again against uh the Kings on the road the other night. Since he came back into the lineup, it's just been a complete cluster f of differing circumstances. It's been I'm starting this game, Lebron's out, I'm shooting a ton of shots. Okay, Now Anthony Davis is out. Okay, Now I'm coming off the bench. Okay, now Lebron's out again. Okay,

now I'm I'm coming off the bench with Lebron out. Okay, Now Lebron is um out, and I'm moved back into the starting lineup. Like it's just been, it's just been a roller coaster of of differing circumstances for him. And then, honestly, one of the worst things that happened to him was he played so well in the first few games, tricked him into thinking he was ahead of where he was

in his own development. You know, if you come into the league and and you come off of an off season when you worked really hard and your average over twenty points a game for a three game stretch and you look like a potential future All Star. Gets in your head a little bit you start to think I'm here in my development when in reality, um somewhere further

down here, you know what I mean. And so he had to kind of have a wake up call in that in that respect, you know, we we saw Davion Mitchell just apply a little bit of ball pressure and completely throw him out of his rhythm offensively and really struggle as a playmaker and make a lot of bad decisions one after the other. That's kind of a youthful thing. That's that's that's part of that. And we talked a lot about how we want him not to be an on ball creator, but a guy who would work on

the second side. Always work against a already compromised defense lebron or rust come down and run in action. If that action gets shut down, you swing it to th HD guy closes out at him. As opposed to dealing with ball pressure, He's working with an advantage. The defense is pre shifted over to the lebron a D side. He has more opportunity to succeed in that second side. I'd like to see more of that the as a posed to what they did with Sacramento putting him on

the ball the whole time. That's that as far as

the shooting goes. Once he had embraces and understands he's not the guy from the first three games, but he's actually closer to what he was in the beginning of last year when Lebron and n A. D were healthy, which is a guy who plays off the ball, who sells his soul on the defensive end of the ball to be an all defense level guard and then attacks closeouts and then up in a little bit from there to have him run some action on the backside, like we just discussed, that's where he's gonna be at his

best with this group in this championship window. Inside of that context, he needs to just be more disciplined with the shot selection. We talk a lot like when you take bad shots and you miss him, you can trick yourself in your head to thinking I just don't have it tonight. Do you really not have it tonight or are you showing bad process? Because where I say I don't have it tonight, is when I'm getting wide open looks all day long and they're just not going in.

That's that's different. But with th HT, what I'm seeing a lot of is taking the same shots from when he was averaging twenty points a game, them not going in and a kind of snowballing on him and him doing the classic young player thing, which is that I'm having a bad game and so now it's manifesting everywhere on the floor, turnovers, bad defense, x y Z. So this Kyle Kuzma used to have this problem a lot

when he was with the Lakers. But that's what I'd like to see is just really really tightening up a shot selection, taking wide open threes on kickouts. But I want him to be aggressive as a catch and shoot shooter. That's so important because it tricks the defense into thinking you're a shooter even when you're not. That was the Kyle Kuzma thing. Again, always a low percentage three point shooter, but he accomplished real spacing for the Lakers because he was a gunner. You had to run out on him

because if you didn't, he would shoot. And he had enough hot nights over the course of his career that he had a reputation as a guy that she had to close out on. That's what th h T needs to be aggressive as a catch and shoot shooter. Be aggressive attacking closeouts. From there, through high shot quality, he will break out of his slump when kids, when high school kids come up to me and say, hey, I'm in a shooting slump. What do I do? I always say,

don't think about your release. Focus on little details in your shot. The two details that I always focus on our legs, like my base, how balanced to my am I going straight up and down? And are my hands big? If I have big hands on the ball, I won't

have those left right misses. So for me, when I'm shooting, as I'm as I'm going into my shot, I deliberately think legs and hands, legs and hands, legs and hands, and I do that deliberately to get out of my head about my release and just focus on these little details that are controllable. Then if I missed the shot, I run down the floor and I go did I have my hands spread out? Did I have a good base? Yes? Okay, that was good process. The miss is the miss who

cares move on. If I'm running down the floor, and I go I didn't really feel like I was on balance, or I didn't I didn't pay attention to my hands and I missed left or right. Eight. Now, I'm not saying I'm mad at myself for missing I'm mad at myself for bad process. I'm mad at myself for bad form. Or maybe I just took a bad shot in terms of you know how much separation I had from the defense.

And then I can get me out at myself and go like, hey z, good one, make a couple of good back to the tough ones that I approached that. And so with th HD, by attacking his own neurosis as a in terms of his shot selection, by getting on the right track taking easy shots, he will inevitably bust through his slump because that's just how this works. Alright, guys, So tomorrow night we will be doing a postgame show

after Lakers Clippers. This will be on my podcast feed here in about fifteen minutes while Aaron Dash Radio tomorrow morning at seven am Pacific Standard time. As always, I sincerely appreciate you guys support of the pod. We continue to basically set a new record every single day that we released an episode I've been so amazed by you guys for rocking with us, and I can't ever express to you guys how much I appreciate it. Um. I hope you guys enjoyed the pot and I will see

you guys tomorrow. Night. H