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Speaker 1: in West Virginia. All right, welcome to Lakers Tonight, presented
Speaker 1: by FanDuel Here at the Volume, I am Jason Timp
Speaker 1: Happy Saturday, everybody. I hope your guys weekends are off
Speaker 1: to a good start. I'm not sure that I've ever
Speaker 1: hated a basketball team as much as I've hated this
Speaker 1: Lakers team. There's something so off about the way they
Speaker 1: approached the game that is offensive to all fans, and
Speaker 1: I know all of you guys can relate to me
Speaker 1: in that regard. We are going to break this game
Speaker 1: down in its entirety. We are going to talk about
Speaker 1: Lebron passing, Carl Malone and then if you guys stick
Speaker 1: around at the end, we're gonna talk a little bit
Speaker 1: about Steph Curry's injury, what that means for the Warriors
Speaker 1: and the Minnesota Timberwolves have won ten of their last
Speaker 1: eleven games, and they've beat a bunch of really good teams.
Speaker 1: So we're gonna dive into that and what that means
Speaker 1: and what I think of them in particular. But let's
Speaker 1: start with the Lakers. You know, I've tweeted this or
Speaker 1: said it on the podcast at least a half dozen
Speaker 1: times this year, but this Lakers team is allergic to success.
Speaker 1: And what I mean by that is every time they
Speaker 1: do something good and are handed some sort of reward
Speaker 1: for their action, they immediately relax. They do not use
Speaker 1: that as a motivation to keep pushing. They use it
Speaker 1: as an excuse to pull their foot off the gas.
Speaker 1: So they're up thirty six six at the end of
Speaker 1: the first quarter. And the most important thing that I
Speaker 1: noticed was defensive effort, but particularly at the point of attack.
Speaker 1: Everybody was doing a good job sliding their feet, keeping
Speaker 1: people in front, and then on every time they got
Speaker 1: to stop, they forced people to shoot over the top.
Speaker 1: This is a Wizard's team that's down a bunch of
Speaker 1: bodies tonight, right. You know, Kyle Kuzma is out of
Speaker 1: the game, Bradley Bills out for the season, so they're
Speaker 1: limited offensively. So when they slide their feet and compete
Speaker 1: on defense, they get stops. And then they started running
Speaker 1: the other way in transition and getting all sorts of
Speaker 1: easy baskets in the full court transition possessions. But in
Speaker 1: the last three quarters of the game, everything that they
Speaker 1: did to build that ten point lead, everything that contributed
Speaker 1: to their success, they stopped doing. They completely let their
Speaker 1: foot off the gas. Defensively. They gave up a hundred
Speaker 1: and one points in the final three quarters and as
Speaker 1: a result, they gave Washington a chance. And then at
Speaker 1: the end of the game, when you give teams a chance,
Speaker 1: it becomes a maker miss league. Lebron misses a wide
Speaker 1: open three on the left wing, Christaps Porzingis makes a
Speaker 1: three at the top of the key. You throw now
Speaker 1: all of a sudden efforts not an issue because you
Speaker 1: are playing hard in crunch time. But now those ugly habits.
Speaker 1: I talked about this last night with Toronto, a sloppy
Speaker 1: basketball team that has been sloppy l season will be
Speaker 1: sloppy when they need to play solid basketball. It's it's
Speaker 1: those habits are not in place, and so even though
Speaker 1: the effort is there, they're gonna make silly mistakes, and
Speaker 1: they did. I talked a lot over the last week
Speaker 1: about the way teams like Dallas have been using double
Speaker 1: teams to compensate for their lack of side and they
Speaker 1: have that down to a science. The Lakers do not
Speaker 1: have that. So when the Wizards started going down to
Speaker 1: Kristaps Porzingis and crunch time against Lebron and against Stanley
Speaker 1: Johnson again, just by having some reasonable double and recover scheme,
Speaker 1: they would be able to handle Christaps Porzingis. He's not
Speaker 1: a good enough player to kill you in a game
Speaker 1: like that, But the Lakers aren't sharp in those areas
Speaker 1: of the game. The Lakers are not a team that
Speaker 1: has established a scheme that that they have all of
Speaker 1: the details ironed out. So when that happened, they couldn't
Speaker 1: handle Kristaps Porzingis. They got killed by that mismatch. A
Speaker 1: couple of shots missed for you, A couple of shots
Speaker 1: make for them game over. And that's what I'm talking about.
Speaker 1: When I when I talk about this saying they're allergic
Speaker 1: to success. If they understood how they got that ten
Speaker 1: point lead in the first quarter, and they replicated it
Speaker 1: for the second quarter, maybe you're up twenty five. Maybe
Speaker 1: the dynamic of the game changes. You're replicated in the
Speaker 1: third quarter, you're up thirty. Now Lebron sits out in
Speaker 1: the fourth quarter. Now it's we're having fun on the
Speaker 1: sideline while the young guys are the bench players are
Speaker 1: out on the floor doing their things. They are allergic
Speaker 1: to success. They don't understand why they have good results
Speaker 1: and why they have bad results. They haven't been able
Speaker 1: to make that association. And because of that, they haven't
Speaker 1: made the necessary efforts and the necessary steps to establish
Speaker 1: those habits in order to actually have some consistent success
Speaker 1: more than one quarter of things going well, more than
Speaker 1: one quality win. What if the Lakers put together three
Speaker 1: or four quality wins. We haven't seen that all season
Speaker 1: because this team doesn't have the basketball character to do that.
Speaker 1: Here in a few minutes, I'm gonna talk about what
Speaker 1: this team could look like with Anthony Davis coming back.
Speaker 1: What is the best case scenario for this team? And
Speaker 1: it has a lot to do with those habits. I'll
Speaker 1: get to that in a minute. I wanted to get
Speaker 1: to Lebron because you know, in this complete travesty of
Speaker 1: a season, he is one of the rare bright spots.
Speaker 1: He is still playing arguably the best basketball of his
Speaker 1: career and at least on the offensive end of the
Speaker 1: floor in his nineteen season, which is absolutely amazing. You passed,
Speaker 1: car I'm alone tonight. It's obviously a big moment. To me.
Speaker 1: The most the most important element to Lebron's scoring longevity,
Speaker 1: what got him to this point is the way he
Speaker 1: developed as a jump shooter. It talked about this a lot,
Speaker 1: uh the other night when he had fifty again talking
Speaker 1: about his shot making ability. But it's pretty crazy to
Speaker 1: see the transition that Lebron's underwent over the course of
Speaker 1: this last decade. So we back up to two thousand thirteen,
Speaker 1: so about nine years ago in the in in the
Speaker 1: finals against Greg Popovich. Mind you, this is literally ten
Speaker 1: years into his career. He is established in the heart
Speaker 1: of his prime. He's a defending champion. He's got four
Speaker 1: m vps at this point, so he's already like firmly
Speaker 1: in the top ten players of all time. Hot on
Speaker 1: MJ's heels with lots of years left, he's already established,
Speaker 1: but he had a glaring weakness. He wasn't a good
Speaker 1: jump shooter, at least in the previous season, and even
Speaker 1: throughout most of that series, Gregg Popovitch, playing off of
Speaker 1: Lebron really messed with him. He didn't have He had
Speaker 1: some proficiency with his jump shot that hadn't matched up
Speaker 1: with his confidence in his jump shot, and so when
Speaker 1: Gregg Popovitch did that, it got in Lebron's head a
Speaker 1: little bit. And in the early portions of that series,
Speaker 1: Lebron really struggled mentally with the coverage that Gregg Popovitch
Speaker 1: was throwing at him. But he breaks through, right He
Speaker 1: breaks through in game six, in game seven, makes a
Speaker 1: bunch of jump shots, particularly in Game seven. He makes
Speaker 1: five threes in that game and the rest is history.
Speaker 1: Since that day, Lebron has been an incredible jump shooter
Speaker 1: this season, coming into tonight, in his last seven games
Speaker 1: now eight because he was four for ten again tonight,
Speaker 1: So in his last eight games he's averaging over nine
Speaker 1: three point shots per game attempted and making over them.
Speaker 1: So here we were halfway through his career well established
Speaker 1: in the heat of his prime. He had a major
Speaker 1: week this and here we are nine years later, and
Speaker 1: he has not only rectified that weakness, but it's now
Speaker 1: a strength. If you go into NBA dot Com and
Speaker 1: you pull up all the three point shooters in the
Speaker 1: league that are attempting at least seven threes per game,
Speaker 1: there's like thirty guys in the league that are that
Speaker 1: high volume three point shooting, and Lebron's right in the
Speaker 1: middle of the pack in terms of percentage, and he's
Speaker 1: ahead of a lot of big name guys who that
Speaker 1: you think of his three point shooters. That's what Lebron
Speaker 1: has turned himself into. He is now a league average
Speaker 1: high volume three point shooters. So I translate that to
Speaker 1: he's one of the better three point shooters in the league.
Speaker 1: That is an incredible accomplishment for a player that already
Speaker 1: had so much in his bag, that already had so many,
Speaker 1: so many things accomplished, and yet he just continued to
Speaker 1: adapt and continued to evolve. It's a testament to his
Speaker 1: work ethic and it's the reason why he's here today,
Speaker 1: averaging thirty points per game in his nineteen season on
Speaker 1: over sixt tru shooting, passing Karl Malone and looking like
Speaker 1: one of the best players in the world. That that's
Speaker 1: what that took. As he's lost that little bit of athleticism.
Speaker 1: He needed to adapt, he needed to evolve. It's like
Speaker 1: the opposite of Russell Westbrook in so many different ways,
Speaker 1: and it's been interesting to see. I remember back in
Speaker 1: it was like either two thousand and sixteen or two
Speaker 1: thousand and seventeen, Lebron had a bad jump shooting game
Speaker 1: and one of a reporter asked him about it, and
Speaker 1: Lebron flat out said to the reporter, I wish I
Speaker 1: could remember more of the details, but he specifically said
Speaker 1: to the reporter, I'm not a jump shooter. That's not
Speaker 1: what I do. That was his mentality kind of at
Speaker 1: that time, like he had worked to the point where
Speaker 1: he could shoot well enough, but it wasn't you know,
Speaker 1: was something that was his bread and butter. Now, I
Speaker 1: bet you if you asked Lebron that same question, he
Speaker 1: would pridefully answer that he believes he's a great shooter.
Speaker 1: And that's that's where again, that's where the stubbornness has
Speaker 1: to fade away. Compare that type of approach to what
Speaker 1: you've seen from Russ. You need to as you get older,
Speaker 1: be willing to read the writing on the wall, see
Speaker 1: what's still working for you, see what's not working for
Speaker 1: you anymore, to watch films, see where opportunities are. And
Speaker 1: I think Lebron understood that the easiest way for his
Speaker 1: to him to extend his prime was to become a
Speaker 1: better three point shooter, and he took advantage of that,
Speaker 1: and that's why he's still where he is in the league.
Speaker 1: At this point, you know you're gonna see a lot
Speaker 1: of nefarious characters, people that have bad intentions tried to
Speaker 1: undercut these statistical accomplishments from Lebron at this point in
Speaker 1: his career, which for the record upfront is flat out
Speaker 1: stupid and unfair, jealous. It's just ugly behavior from those people,
Speaker 1: because the reality of the situation is Lebron has won
Speaker 1: more championships than any player or franchise since he came
Speaker 1: into the league in two thousand three. He's been to
Speaker 1: the finals ten times. His winning resume speaks for itself.
Speaker 1: If you want to try to pretend like he's not
Speaker 1: all about that get out of here man like, for instance,
Speaker 1: he very easily could have sat out tonight on the
Speaker 1: back of a back tail end of a back to
Speaker 1: back and played in Cleveland and had this accomplishment in
Speaker 1: front of his home fans. Credit to Lebron for seeing
Speaker 1: a winnable game on the resume or on the schedule
Speaker 1: and thinking he had an opportunity to get his team
Speaker 1: some buffer and the standings under the circumstance, especially with
Speaker 1: their schedule coming up. But like, what's so interesting about
Speaker 1: it to me is if you remember after in two
Speaker 1: thou seventeen when the Lake when the Calves won the
Speaker 1: Eastern Conference. After the game, there was some footage in
Speaker 1: the locker room of him telling all of his teammates like, Hey,
Speaker 1: this isn't guaranteed. Enjoy this moment, Enjoy the little victories.
Speaker 1: And it's it's super interesting to me because Lebron is
Speaker 1: a guy again who's been to the mountaintop more than anybody,
Speaker 1: any team, any coach, Andy GM and anybody right now
Speaker 1: in this ere except for Greg Popovitch, I suppose, But
Speaker 1: at this point, you know, uh, like it's easy to
Speaker 1: lose sight of the perspective of the fact that only
Speaker 1: one team can win an NBA championship and understand that
Speaker 1: you're gonna go up to bat, you know, so many
Speaker 1: times in your career, and you're not guaranteed to win
Speaker 1: it every time. So in those years when you don't,
Speaker 1: you have to take time to appreciate and take time
Speaker 1: to relax and kind of soak in the little accomplishments
Speaker 1: along the way. That's always been one of Lebron's major philosophies,
Speaker 1: and I think that's what he views with this accomplishment.
Speaker 1: He knows he's a winner. He knows anybody who's being
Speaker 1: you know, objective about this, knows he's a winner. And
Speaker 1: he knows that this is a big deal. You know, Lebron.
Speaker 1: You could make the case that I said this in
Speaker 1: the video I released earlier. You can make the case
Speaker 1: that just his scoring is enough to put him in
Speaker 1: the goat conversation. You know, when you look at a
Speaker 1: guy like MJ or Kobe, it's this two way dominant score, right,
Speaker 1: a guy who could score in a million different ways,
Speaker 1: especially in crunch time, and can guard the other team's
Speaker 1: best player. Well, even if I just simplified Lebron's game
Speaker 1: down to that, his ability to do things defensively as
Speaker 1: a versatile perimeter defender, and his ability to score the basketball.
Speaker 1: He's every bit as good at those things as the
Speaker 1: all time greats. He's every bit as good at those
Speaker 1: things as Kobe, as MJ. That's what makes his goat
Speaker 1: case so compelling, because he has so much more that
Speaker 1: he brings to the table as a basketball player then
Speaker 1: just those two things, and and and that's why I
Speaker 1: think it's important to appreciate these accomplishments, to take that time.
Speaker 1: You're not guaranteed Lebron next year. I expect the Lakers,
Speaker 1: if health, health willing, I expect the Lakers to be
Speaker 1: very firmly in the top tier of contenders. I think
Speaker 1: they learned a bunch of valuable lessons this year. I
Speaker 1: think they're gonna approach the season way more seriously. I
Speaker 1: think they're gonna get more, They're gonna fix a lot
Speaker 1: of the issues they made. They're gonna be relevant again
Speaker 1: next year. The focus can be winning. And you know,
Speaker 1: maybe when Anthony Davis gets back and they're in the
Speaker 1: play and the focus can't be winning. But right now,
Speaker 1: I understand and I respect the idea that you of
Speaker 1: Lebron just taking advantage of the small victories and taking
Speaker 1: the time to appreciate. Start your bracket with a bang.
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Speaker 1: gambler dot net in West Virginia that really quickly before
Speaker 1: we move on from the Lakers, I wanted to I've
Speaker 1: been work thinking about this over the course of the
Speaker 1: last week, because the Lakers have been playing a little
Speaker 1: bit better basketball. Not great, but they're playing a little
Speaker 1: bit better basketball. They should have won tonight. They should
Speaker 1: be on a little bit of a windstreak here. So
Speaker 1: what is the best version of this Lakers team? What
Speaker 1: does it look like with Anthony Davis coming back? And
Speaker 1: does it have enough to make a run at things?
Speaker 1: And when you start to look at the pieces available,
Speaker 1: it doesn't look that bad. If you look in the
Speaker 1: front court, I've got Lebron and Anthony Davis, which is
Speaker 1: as good of a front court as you'll find anywhere
Speaker 1: in the league. You've got when in Gabriel now is
Speaker 1: another guy that kind of like is the opposite of
Speaker 1: the Dwight in the DeAndre Jordan's. He's thinner, much faster,
Speaker 1: can get up and down the floor with the style
Speaker 1: that the Lakers play, can guard on the perimeter better.
Speaker 1: They can almost use him as a wing in a
Speaker 1: lot of ways. That's interesting. Then you go on the
Speaker 1: wing and you've got Stanley Johnson. He's okay, you know,
Speaker 1: car Melo. Anthony's not really a defensive wing, but he
Speaker 1: accomplishes a lot of what a Wayne can do offensively,
Speaker 1: and you've got Austin Reeves who's one of the better
Speaker 1: off ball players in the league already as a rookie,
Speaker 1: so they're pretty decent on the wing. And then you
Speaker 1: look at the guards and you've got Russell Westbrook, who
Speaker 1: we do not need to talk about. Let's just leave
Speaker 1: that on the side. And then we've got Taylor Horton Tucker,
Speaker 1: who's an okay backup guard right in the league. And
Speaker 1: then you've got Malik Monk, who's a offensive microwave type
Speaker 1: of guy, gives a lot back on defense, but he's
Speaker 1: definitely a net positive type of player. And then you've
Speaker 1: got some depth. You've got DJ Augustine, You've got Avery
Speaker 1: Bradley and Dwight Howard, guys that complain specific matchups when
Speaker 1: you need something. They've got nine solid guys in that rotation.
Speaker 1: So in theory, this is still a team that has
Speaker 1: a puncher's chance to beat anybody, because if you've got
Speaker 1: seven solid rotation players with Lebron and a D they
Speaker 1: should be able to beat anybody if something's break right correct.
Speaker 1: But they, like we talked about earlier, they don't have
Speaker 1: the habits and what's concerning to me is if you
Speaker 1: asked me, Jason, how does Lebron in a d work
Speaker 1: their way through the playing tournament and beat Phoenix in
Speaker 1: the first round. How do they do that? I would
Speaker 1: tell you it starts right now, right at this moment.
Speaker 1: For the rest of the season, they need to work
Speaker 1: on establishing habits. Treated as like a like a three
Speaker 1: week long training camp. You've got three weeks here, you
Speaker 1: got you know roughly what I think twelve games. Take
Speaker 1: these twelve games, treat them like a training camp. Really
Speaker 1: build out those habits. Take it seriously so that when
Speaker 1: Anthony Davis gets back, you have the habits to match
Speaker 1: your talent. Are they the most talented team in the league. No,
Speaker 1: but we've been over that. They're not good enough with
Speaker 1: their role players. But they have a puncher's chance to
Speaker 1: beat anybody. So if you attach that with championship level habits,
Speaker 1: then they can win. They need to show us over
Speaker 1: the course of the next few weeks that they can
Speaker 1: put multiple games together of success. Now do I think
Speaker 1: that's going to happen. No, That's why I said this
Speaker 1: is the best case scenario. But if are in that
Speaker 1: locker room and you're looking at each other and you're like, hey,
Speaker 1: are we gonna go for this or not. That's what
Speaker 1: you have to deal with. That's what that needs to be,
Speaker 1: the actionable item. It's one thing to sit in the
Speaker 1: locker room and say, hey, guys, when a D gets back,
Speaker 1: we're gonna make a run at this. No, you have
Speaker 1: some steps you gotta get through first, and that and
Speaker 1: and right now, you've got to somehow distance yourself entirely
Speaker 1: from the previous you know, psychology of this team and
Speaker 1: somehow start fresh and build a new identity around this
Speaker 1: group of guys. There's enough new faces in there with
Speaker 1: d J. Augustine, with when you in Gabriel, with Stanley Johnson.
Speaker 1: You've got enough new faces in there to try to
Speaker 1: do that. They just got to do that. But here
Speaker 1: we are again. I think it's March nineteen, and they
Speaker 1: just showed us again that that's not who they are.
Speaker 1: So that's why what I'm laying out is the best
Speaker 1: case scenario and not the most likely scenario for those
Speaker 1: of you who are just joining us. This is Lakers Tonight,
Speaker 1: presented by FanDuel here at the volume. I wanted to
Speaker 1: move on for to Steph Curry for a second, because
Speaker 1: is we haven't had a chance to talk about him
Speaker 1: since his injury. I've done as much digging as I
Speaker 1: can and paid as close attention as I can to
Speaker 1: the reports that have come out, and it sounds to
Speaker 1: me like there's optimism that he's coming back before the
Speaker 1: end of the season. It's gonna be very similar to
Speaker 1: what happened to Lebron last year. Guy dives into his leg,
Speaker 1: suffers a lower leg injury, gonna be coming back with
Speaker 1: just a handful of games left. I think Lebron came
Speaker 1: back with four games left last season. They might be
Speaker 1: able to get three or four with step this year.
Speaker 1: You know, back in December, I did a list of
Speaker 1: what I said were my best contenders, my top contenders
Speaker 1: in the league, the teams that I thought were most
Speaker 1: likely to win the championship, And at that point in time,
Speaker 1: I had the Golden State Warriors number one because they
Speaker 1: were so incredible defensively, and at that time Steph was
Speaker 1: still playing well. Steph was a top tier superstar, like
Speaker 1: one of the best players in the world. And I'm
Speaker 1: always going to defer to those kinds of guys, especially
Speaker 1: when they have an unbelievable defense, and they had Clay
Speaker 1: Thompson on the way back, Jordan Pool was playing well.
Speaker 1: There was a lot of reasons to be optimistic that
Speaker 1: that Golden State team could be really good. But then
Speaker 1: Steph went into a slump. And in the times that
Speaker 1: I've talked about the Warriors since I've said one thing
Speaker 1: very consistently. The only way that the Warriors are going
Speaker 1: to win the title is Steph Curry has a nuclear
Speaker 1: playoff run, absolute peak Steph thirty plus points per game,
Speaker 1: you know, uh true shooting knocking down half his threes.
Speaker 1: That's what it's gonna take for this team to win.
Speaker 1: And he's not really shown anything. He's had these little
Speaker 1: burst where things have looked a little better, but he's
Speaker 1: not as bad as he was in January. But he
Speaker 1: has not a set. He has not shown us a
Speaker 1: consistent stretch of the old staph and so the injury
Speaker 1: is frustrating on that front because he's a perimeter player
Speaker 1: who relies on his handle in his jump shot, which
Speaker 1: means he's very dependent on rhythm. For those of you
Speaker 1: have played the game at some level, whether that's you know,
Speaker 1: in high school, college, or even if you just play
Speaker 1: in your men's league. You're familiar with the concept rhythm.
Speaker 1: You have to feel comfortable with the basketball and confident
Speaker 1: with the basketball. That does not happen, but the flip
Speaker 1: of a switch. It takes time. It's so the the
Speaker 1: idea of Steph busting out of his slump becomes way
Speaker 1: less likely now that he's sitting out with the lower
Speaker 1: leg injury. The only like silver lining that you could
Speaker 1: cling to is if maybe, just maybe his slump was
Speaker 1: associated with another nagging lower body injury and somehow he
Speaker 1: can rectify both of those during this rehab. Kind of
Speaker 1: like Anthony Davis when he sprained his knee. He was
Speaker 1: not looking good before the knee injury. Then he went down,
Speaker 1: then he came back, and when he came back, he
Speaker 1: looked spry, right, he looked lighter, he looked like he
Speaker 1: was faster. He had all of these you know, this
Speaker 1: kind of this newfound physical energy. Right, maybe that happens
Speaker 1: with Steph. I don't think it's likely, but that's the
Speaker 1: best case scenario. The whole thing was Steph getting hurt
Speaker 1: is exactly what frustrates me so much about this Lakers team,
Speaker 1: because is Lebron getting hurt. That's gonna happen. He got
Speaker 1: hurt a couple of times this year. Anthony Davis getting hurt,
Speaker 1: that's gonna happen. But it's all about getting healthy at
Speaker 1: the right time. And right now you're seeing some teams
Speaker 1: around the league, particularly two of the top tier contenders,
Speaker 1: Golden State and Phoenix, dealing with some injuries. You could
Speaker 1: be getting healthy while the other teams are on the
Speaker 1: down downward trajectory. But instead, you messed around all season
Speaker 1: from day one of training camp. You didn't take it seriously.
Speaker 1: So you're a bad basketball team. So now instead of
Speaker 1: being a team that can capitalize on things. Look at
Speaker 1: Milwaukee last year. We talked about them last night. They
Speaker 1: were nineteen and seventeen against five hundred and above teams.
Speaker 1: They were not a dominant regular season team. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: Janice kind of fell by the wayside a lot in
Speaker 1: the discourse. But look at what happened. Lebron and Anthony
Speaker 1: Davis got hurt. You had all the injuries that happened
Speaker 1: to the Brooklyn Nets, you know, like like they Trey
Speaker 1: Young got hurt in the conference finals. So some things
Speaker 1: broke right from Milwaukee. Next thing, you know, they're holding
Speaker 1: the trophy. That's that's the way things can break in
Speaker 1: the NBA, and that's why it's so important to always
Speaker 1: keep your eye on the prize even as you're dealing
Speaker 1: with little nagging injuries and things along those lines. That's
Speaker 1: what annoys me about this Laker team. I would like
Speaker 1: Lebron and a d s as a puncher chance against
Speaker 1: anybody in the league if something's broke right, and I
Speaker 1: don't know that they are even remotely close enough to
Speaker 1: the level of basketball, not talent, just basketball to be
Speaker 1: able to compete in any of those environments. All Right,
Speaker 1: before we get out of here, I wanted to really
Speaker 1: quickly hit on the Minnesota Timberwolves. So they are ten
Speaker 1: and one in their last eleven games in that stretch,
Speaker 1: they have the number one offense and number one defense
Speaker 1: in the entire NBA. They have the best net rating
Speaker 1: in the league in that stretch by nine point eight
Speaker 1: points over second place. They beat the Bucks, the Lakers,
Speaker 1: the Heat, the Warriors, and the Calves in this stretch,
Speaker 1: So it sounds amazing, right. A little bit of context.
Speaker 1: When they played the Bucks, they didn't have j Honice.
Speaker 1: When they played the Lakers, they didn't have Anthony Davis.
Speaker 1: When they played the Heat, they didn't have Jimmy Butler,
Speaker 1: when they played the Warriors, they didn't have Dreamond Green,
Speaker 1: and when they played the Calves, they didn't have Darius Garland.
Speaker 1: The last time they played a healthy contender was the
Speaker 1: Philadelphia seventy sixers in that first game with James Harden
Speaker 1: at home, and they got utterly obliterated. So, to be clear,
Speaker 1: you have to take care of business in the NBA.
Speaker 1: Like look at the Lakers. They can't even beat bad
Speaker 1: teams at this point, so I never want to undercut success.
Speaker 1: They are playing really good basketball right now, but they've
Speaker 1: had some good fortune with the injuries. Looking at the
Speaker 1: team specifically, there's a lot of things that I like
Speaker 1: about them because of their the what they've done in
Speaker 1: the draft. They're actually pretty athletic on the wing. Jared
Speaker 1: Vanderbilt and Jaden McDaniels bring that kind of athleticism and
Speaker 1: that dirty work element that's so important. Torrian Prince has
Speaker 1: also helped on that front. Carl Towns is one of
Speaker 1: the better matchup problems that you have in the league.
Speaker 1: Right That's always gonna make me optimistic about a team
Speaker 1: in the playoffs. The reason why I'm not stoked on Minnesota,
Speaker 1: the reason why I don't think there as good as
Speaker 1: any of these other teams that I've been showcasing on
Speaker 1: this show recently, is their guards are too irradic. Anthony
Speaker 1: Edwards is young, super talented. This is nothing to be
Speaker 1: said about his ceiling, But D'Angelo Russell and Anthony Edwards
Speaker 1: are not going to be able to execute with that
Speaker 1: that slow down, methodical, super intelligent basketball that they're going
Speaker 1: to have to play to beat the super top tier
Speaker 1: teams in the league. If you're gonna outduel Steph Curry,
Speaker 1: if you're gonna outdue that Phoenix Suns team with Chris
Speaker 1: Paul or god forbid you, you know, make it to
Speaker 1: the finals and you have to beat somebody out East,
Speaker 1: you have to be able to execute. This is something
Speaker 1: I talked about a lot with these other contenders, right like,
Speaker 1: how did how do they stack up against the best?
Speaker 1: And I would say Anthony Edwards and D'angela Russell is
Speaker 1: perimeter Excuse me as perimeter decision makers are gonna be
Speaker 1: at near the end of that list in terms of
Speaker 1: teams that are gonna be in this playoff runs. So
Speaker 1: they're playing some good basketball right now, a lot to
Speaker 1: get excited about. But I wish they had that one
Speaker 1: really savvy perimeter decision maker that could settle them down
Speaker 1: and get them into their stuff, get them calm when
Speaker 1: things are going bad, get to get the ball to
Speaker 1: the right guy when he's hot and has it going.
Speaker 1: Those are the kinds of things that would make me
Speaker 1: more optimistic about that team. And obviously, because Carl Towns
Speaker 1: is a post player, he's not a He's not a
Speaker 1: guy who can initiate from the perimeter. That limits what
Speaker 1: he can do in the half court of a playoff
Speaker 1: series when teams are really dialed in on him as well.
Speaker 1: So good timber Wolves basketball here in the last couple
Speaker 1: of weeks, but I'm not as high on them as
Speaker 1: their fans probably are. All right, guys, that is all
Speaker 1: we have for tonight. We will be back Monday after
Speaker 1: the Lakers play in Cleveland. As always, I sincerely appreciate
Speaker 1: your guys support, and I will see you the volume