Locked On Lakers - Daily Podcast On The Los Angeles Lakers - Balanced Lakers Bounce Back, Blow Out Golden State 129-101

Episode Date: March 1, 2026

To say the Lakers needed a palate cleanser is a major understatement. Having lost three in a row, a fourth on Saturday against a shorthanded Golden State team could have led to disaster.  Instead, the Lakers got a reminder that they can, in fact, play quality basketball, taking control early of a Warriors team that couldn't hit a shot and ever giving it up. Final score, 129-101 It was a balanced effort for the Lakers. 22 points from LeBron James, 28 from Luka Dončić -- all three got extended rest in the fourth quarter -- supplemented by double-digit performances from Luke Kennard (16) and Jake LaRavia (15). The Lakers took care of the ball, were generally attentive defensively, and kept the energy up all evening. You could tell as well in their body language that they badly needed a game like this one.  Good too that they got to cruise, because they need to be ready and strong Sunday in Sacramento.    HOSTS: Andy and Brian Kamenetzky      Everydayer ClubIf you never miss an episode, it’s time to make it official. Join the Locked On Everydayer Club and get ad-free audio, access to our members-only Discord, and more — all built for our most loyal fans. Click here to learn more and join your team’s community: https://lockedonpodcasts.com/everydayerclub   Support Us By Supporting Our Sponsors! TurboTax This year you’re getting a major upgrade — Intuit TurboTax now has in-person locations nationwide. Visit http://TurboTax.com/local to book your appointment today. Betterhelp This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. BetterHelp makes it easy to get matched online with a qualified therapist.  Sign up and get 10% off at http://BetterHelp.com/LOCKEDONNBA.    5-Hour ENERGY Have your cake & drink it too. Birthday cake-flavor is back, no fork needed. Vanilla-y cakey flavor, caffeinated kick, and no sugar. It's party time. Order Now at 5-hourENERGY.com or Amazon. Indeed Listeners of this show get a $75 Sponsored Job Credit to help give your job the premium placement it deserves at http://Indeed.com/podcast Gametime Today's episode is brought to you by Gametime. Download the Gametime app, create an account, and use code LOCKEDON for $20 off your first purchase. Terms and conditions apply. FanDuel FanDuel is giving you a way to turn that energy into even bigger potential wins with a College Basketball Parlay Profit Boost.Visit https://FANDUEL.COM to get started — Play Your Game.   FANDUEL DISCLAIMER: 21+ in select states. First online real money wager only. Bonus issued as nonwithdrawable free bets that expires in 14 days. Restrictions apply. See terms at sportsbook.fanduel.com. Gambling Problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER or visit FanDuel.com/RG (CO, IA, MD, MI, NJ, PA, IL, VA, WV), 1-800-NEXT-STEP or text NEXTSTEP to 53342 (AZ), 1-888-789-7777 or visit ccpg.org/chat (CT), 1-800-9-WITH-IT (IN), 1-800-522-4700 (WY, KS) or visit ksgamblinghelp.com (KS), 1-877-770-STOP (LA), 1-877-8-HOPENY or text HOPENY (467369) (NY), TN REDLINE 1-800-889-9789 (TN) Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The Lakers rebound with a badly needed win in San Francisco. They beat the Warriors 129-101, and they feature balance, Andy. The big three, are they starting to get some rhythm? That's next. You are Locked-on Lakers. Your daily Los Angeles Lakers podcast, part of the Locked-on Podcast Network, your team every day. Thanks to everybody for making Locked on Lakers' first listen to every day,

Monday through Friday, sometimes on weekends, even on holidays, and often more than once a day now, no matter how. where you get your podcasts. This one's always going to be free for you, never behind paywall. Lockdown Lakers on YouTube is where you can hang out with over 37,000 is the number of subscribers to the channel.

So no matter how you're doing it, you're making part of making the Lockedon podcast network, the number one sports podcast network in this for any other known universe, Brian Kimmenezki, Andy Kaminetsky. We have covered the Lakers for a long time, almost 20 years

for the athletic, for ESPN, for the LA Times. And you can tell, Andy, when a team needs a victory, this was a team that badly needed to win. They get one against the Golden State Warriors, a short-handed Warriors squad. Lakers take control early. They keep it throughout. They sit starters in the fourth quarter. This was pretty much the blueprint that you would have drawn up before the game even started. Yeah, all caveats acknowledged the warriors did not have Steph Curry. They did not have Jimmy Butler. They did not have Chris Topps for Zingis. Bill Richard got hurt during the game. It was a skeleton crew for the Warriors that predictably had issues scoring.

At the same time, though, the Lakers didn't just win this game. They won this game the way you wanted them to, and frankly, they needed to, which was decisive. They would have won this game by a full 30-plus had there been no garbage time and had J.J. Reddick done the absolutely insane thing of keeping the starters out there the entire game. But the Lakers were often up by 30 when they were playing the guys who were in the rotation. They did a really good job of moving the ball, like better than they had in previous games. They did a very good job actually hitting outside shots. 46% from behind the arc.

the tone was set by LeBron, who has been struggling from behind the arc this season, but four of four in the first half from behind the arc. We're going to use them all up at once. Yeah, it's a little bit concerning. Clearly, I mean, or maybe. Well, I was just to say maybe it's just an end of February quota thing, like he had a few left over and needed to burn him before March.

Yeah, although, I mean, it's not going to be easy to tell whether or not he's going to be able to keep him going based on what hopefully he does against the Sacramento Kings because they're just an absolute tire-fire missing half of their squad as well. But LeBron hit four threes himself in the first half. Luca, who had 16 points in the third quarter, hit four threes in that one,

and that really just pushed the game just completely out of reach into an absolute blowout. And again, obviously winning in this context, does not mean that the problems that had everybody, including the Lakers themselves, concerned over the three-game losing streak, they're not all instantly solved by beating this Warriors team. But at the same time, it is good to see them beat this Warriors team in precisely the way they were supposed to. So kudos to them for that. I just look, I mean, there is no fix. There is no solves the problem.

I mean, I've seen some people on social already saying, like, who cares? They already, you know, this team sucks. They beat the Warriors. Great. It's like, yeah, well, you know, it's, you know, maybe it's, it's not, you know, the, the, you're something you slap up on the refrigerator or the box score from this one, but it's a hell of a lot better than losing the Warriors. And this team.

Or just beating them by like needed. Just beating them by like six. Yeah, you're right. Like in a close game, sure. It's like you need to win the game. game. You can only play the teams that you're playing and there is no fix. The Lakers needed to see good plays happen and they got that. They got balanced. They got all three of the big three playing well at the same time. You know, getting off to a good start, increasing that

plus minus, you know, net rating problem that they've been having. And it's like every one of these things is just a small step that hopefully begins a trajectory. that goes in the right way. And then you get guys like, you know, Luke Canard pitch in and Jake LaRavia hit a couple outside shots. They have 31 points from those two guys. Like, this stuff is all important. And I, you know, you hopefully can roll that into a little bit of momentum by winning on Sunday.

And maybe you just don't feel so bad about yourselves as a team and can get things recalibrated. Yeah. And D'Andre Aiton, who was not terribly involved from an offensive standpoint in this game, and it wasn't that he wasn't playing well, but he just did not get a ton of looks, but he had 10 rebounds. He was energetic. He was active. Like, again, this was the opponent in front of them. But quite frankly, we've seen this team not just play down to bad opponents.

Like, I know their record against teams below 500 is very strong, and it's something that has kept them in the top six despite a lot of inconsistencies and a lot of their flaws. But we've seen them often lose focus or start going for bad shot, knockout shots, like early in the third quarter, like looking to put a team away by the eight-minute mark of the third quarter by just trying to create three after three after three, off the dribble, no ball movement, whatever.

I thought they did a good job in this game of actually running their offense and continuing to move the ball. Like there was a moment in the second quarter where I thought they got away from it. It also coincided with Golden State going on, I want to say a 13 to 2 run. And then from there, I thought they snapped out of the bad habits, went back to what was working. And that in and of itself is part of. of the habit that they're looking to build, something we've talked about a lot with this team,

that they're not methodical enough, they're not disciplined enough, they won't do sometimes the extra steps that maybe even can feel boring, but are important in terms of just building up the muscle memory of playing the finger quote right way. They did that tonight against a lesser opponent. All right, so after the break,

let's talk a little about there are a couple of interesting things in terms of trying to maximize LeBron, Luca, and Reeves that JJ seems to have sort of settled on in terms of what the rotation looks like and stuff like that. So we'll get to it next. Locked on Lakers is brought to you by DoorDash. The season's heating up, and DoorDash has a way to keep fans in their bag the whole way through, whether you're watching the highlights, the tunnel fits or just your favorite player. DoorDash makes the entire season more.

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Lakers have played so poorly overall, the results have been really bad. there at least are some indications that that threesome LeBron and, you know, Luca with LeBron and AR is playing a little bit better together. You know, the minutes, you know, the plus minus in those minutes is improving some. But it's pretty clear that JJ has kind of figured out the strategy that he wants to use. Luke and LeBron are Luca and AR playing most of the first quarter, if not all of it. comes about about halfway through, then you have a lot of

sequences where LeBron is the only of the big three on the floor. Like he plays a lot of those minutes by himself with four players from the bench or, you know, supporting players, or at the very least. And again,

sort of statistically, that seems to be the way that everybody has been thriving, where LeBron with group, has been the best positive minutes for LeBron this year. And then AR and Luca can kind of do their thing with a little less congestion. That part of it seems to be, I would suspect, where he's going to keep going.

It makes sense. Like in a lot of ways, it's less as more. And in a perfect world, you'd love to find a way where Luca, LeBron, and Austin can really synergize everything they bring together offensively. And that becomes the vision that everyone had of an elite offense that can't be guarded. And there's still 20 plus games left. Maybe they can figure out a way to make it work. For the time being, though, I think it's been often pretty cluttered.

And I think it's in a lot of ways been too much of a theoretical good thing. Like it's just, it's too much overlap in terms of skill set. style and not enough variance in terms of the offensive style. Like all three of them can play off ball. None of the three thrive off ball. I mean, AR moves pretty well. LeBron, you know, part of the problem with LeBron off ball is that his shooting has been so bad this year.

Right. So I think that's part of the, you know, if the shooting percentage for LeBron goes up, that changes the equation a little bit. To be perfectly honest, Luca is not a great off player. I think he's maybe more of a lot. But in fairness, I think there is a temptation to take a little bit of a break when he doesn't have the ball, which I understand. But he's not like one of these guys who's running and dashing and cutting all over the floor. No, no.

Like I said, you can find a way to use all three off ball. I would agree with you. Luca is the weakest of the three playing off ball. He's also of the three, the one I want playing off ball the least because I want his on ball skills the most. But regardless, though, none of the three thrive off ball. Like they don't. They are all at their best and I think also they're most comfortable and, frankly,

most preferred with the ball. So you have to find ways if you can't come up with a perfect synergy working that way, then you have to find ways to split it up. And I think it makes sense. I also think it makes sense why a unit of LeBron and say smart, Vando, Aiton, and either like Cunard or La Ravia or someone like that, you've got these high-energy guys in the case of Vando and Smart and La Ravia, guys that will look to play with physicality and energy,

and LeBron just quarterbacking everything. I think it makes sense why that works, particularly because when LeBron wants to, he can be just as much like, and I thought actually tonight against the Warriors, his physicality in the first half made a difference. And LeBron can fit with a group like that. So I think JJ is getting a handle on the way to make this stuff work. I think you'd mention Luke Conard. he's really been

everyone expects the shooting and hopes for more volume from behind the arc from Conard and Conard acknowledged in the post game interview on 710 ESPN I did the pre and halftime and post for the radio coverage and heard the interview that John Ireland and

Michael Thompson did with him like he acknowledged in that yeah I know people want more volume from me from behind the arc but he's done a really good job of putting the ball on the floor getting himself to the back also making the right passing play. He's helped keep the wheels greased offensively in a way that I did not necessarily expect from him.

And I think it's been a real, I think it's been a real facet that the Lakers can look to utilize more moving forward. And also, if say it's just LeBron and no Luca, no Austin, I think Kinnard can be helpful on that. front as being a guy that can help move the ball. He's just a more complete offensive player than I think maybe he was getting credit for, you know, for people who might not have seen him that much. Yeah, and LeBron, you know, LeBron, we've talked about LeBron and Luca, like, Luca is the closest thing sort of offensively in terms of the complete skill set, the floor vision.

They'd be like, he's kind of in a lot of ways like LeBron, so it makes sense that splitting them up to some degree allows both of them to be as effective as possible. And so, like, we'll see. Tomorrow is a, Sunday is a really good opportunity for the Lakers to continue finding some confidence, continue building. Because I know I've mentioned this on the show before, every dayers may recognize it. The games against the bad teams are, yeah, sure, you don't hang your hat on them. But particularly when you're slumping, you need the opportunity to make good things happen.

And it's hard to make good things happen against Oklahoma City. It's a lot easier to get the reps and get the feel and get the timing and the rhythm against a team like Golden State as they're constructed on Saturday or Sacramento hopefully on Sunday. So plenty of look forward to after Sunday's game. Of course, we'll have a full show for you. Get you ready for Monday and Locked on YouTube. We're ready to hang out with over 37,000 subscribers to the channel. Check out the Everyday Air Club. It's in the show notes.

We'll see everyone next time.