Locked On Lakers - Daily Podcast On The Los Angeles Lakers - Jarred Vanderbilt's Injury Makes LA's Depth Problem vs. the Thunder Worse

Starting point is 00:00:00 The Lakers may be without Jared Vanderbilt going forward. What does that mean for a team already short on depth? That is next. You are locked on Lakers. Your daily Los Angeles Lakers podcast, part of the Lockedon Podcast Network, your team every day. Thanks everybody for joining Lockedon Lakers, Brian Komeneski, Andy Komenesky, Lakers lost game one by 18 points on Tuesday night.

Starting point is 00:00:33 They're trying to turn around. and figure out how they can make some waves against Oklahoma City by Thursday. We basically have a couple more days to figure it out. And one of the things is to make it a little bit harder, we'll try to talk about a little bit more about Austin Reeves, but in him playing better because that's that's solution one. The Lakers, though, also have a depth problem. Game one really showed the difference between the depth of Oklahoma City

Starting point is 00:01:04 and the Lakers and for the Lakers, things might be getting thinner because Jared Vanderbilt suffered that quite gruesome-looking pinky injury to his right hand in game one. No word yet on whether, or at least as we're recording on Tuesday evening, no word on whether or not Vando will miss time. Our friend Jeff Stott's, the great injury expert, noted on his Twitter feed that just dislocating the pinky, which is what Vando was ruled out with.

Starting point is 00:01:36 Just a dislocation wouldn't necessarily miss time, but if it breaks skin, which it looked like it did, Kobe Price from LA Daily News, what's the California Post? From the California Post. Right. I'm sorry, he used to be there.

Starting point is 00:01:51 California Post Kobe Price reports that source told him that it did break skin or if there's a fracture. That would also keep Bando out. But either way, he's going to be limited. And if he's out, Andy, that takes a, you know, again, a thin Lakers team and makes him even thinner. Yeah. And even a diminished version of Vando, like I realized this was a right hand injury, right finger injury, and Vando's left-handed and not, you know, a shooter and offensively oriented player to begin with. But this is important.

Starting point is 00:02:21 He is a defense, you know, defensive specialist who has very active hands. Like his hands are a big part of his game defensively. And, you know, control of his hands, you know, the ability to, you know, swipe in and out, all that stuff could be compromised by, you know, a hand that he either doesn't have as much control over or it really is that painful to use it in the way that he wants to. If he doesn't have the same grip on the ball, he might not be able to get steals as easily or control deflections, things like that. So even just compromise could affect Vando.

Starting point is 00:03:02 But moving past that, the Lakers have been operating with a rotation of, you know, the five starters and then off the bench, Jackson Hayes, Luke Conard, Jake Leravia, and Vando. If Vando is out of that mix, you start wondering, A, if anybody else is going to be elevated, but also just how. How do you account for that absence and the skill sets? Because Jackson Hayes is a completely different player. Luke Kennard is a completely different player. The closest comp, it's not apples to apples, but closest in terms of functionality would be Jake, except Jake has really been struggling.

Starting point is 00:03:46 Other than the hustle plays that you expect from Jake, he's been struggling a lot in these playoffs. And he's been hard to, keep on the floor longer than what JJ's doing anyway. And then when you start thinking about who are the other options that aren't in the rotation, it all swings back to the idea of JJ's options are limited and not great. It's, it's, I can see where people would say to it, guys, it's not going to be like Vando at most to be playing 12 minutes a game, 10 minutes a game, and he's not that effective.

Starting point is 00:04:23 And even if you believe those things are true. and I think to some degree they are. It's also, it's not just like how do you like what does it mean for Vando to be gone because you lose Jared Vanderbilt. It means more likely because of what you just talked about that LeBron plays two minutes more. Ruey plays two, three minutes more, Aiton plays or Aiton Jackson Hayes, that combination. You get guys who everybody's just got to play a little bit more. and that is really challenging against the thunder because of Oklahoma City's incredible depth.

Starting point is 00:05:05 So we'll talk about where that really plays out. And one of the sort of the hidden advantages that Oklahoma City has next. Lockdown Lakers is brought to you by Better Help. May is Mental Health Awareness Month, and it's an important reminder that whatever you're carrying right now, you don't need to go through it alone. Life can feel overwhelming sometimes, whether stress, uncertainty, anxiety, or just trying to manage everything on what feels like a massive plate. And it's easy to feel like you need to figure out everything by yourself. Therapy can be a place to get support, gain perspective, talk things through with someone who's there to listen and to help.

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Starting point is 00:07:12 You can check out the stats. You can check out everything, maybe even take a peek at game too, and see just by how much Oklahoma City is favored. 15 and a half. 15 and a half as of this recording. That's what it was in game one and they managed to cover. Good for those guys.

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Starting point is 00:08:34 NBA. The part, a part, there's no the part, a part that makes us even more challenging. The depth of Oklahoma City isn't just that they have, you know, wow, they have lots of good players. Look, AJ Mitchell can jump into the starting lineup and, you know, it doesn't do. duplicate what Jalen Williams does, but like, he's a really good player. And, you know, you've got guys like Isaiah Joe coming off the bench who are just, you know, really great shooters. Or Casin Wallace, one of the best defenders in the league. Alex Caruso, one of the other best defenders in the league. Jared McCain played really well in game one.

Starting point is 00:09:10 He's been a nice addition for them. And, you know, like all of those guys can, you know, go super hard whenever they play because Caruso, Case and Wallace, they're not going to play in this series, at least, especially when Williams gets back, probably more than 25, 30 minutes, you know, 25 minutes a game, probably with that. And you can defend at a really high level when you're those guys and you can go like that. It applies all the way down the roster, though. When you have really good depth like that, your starters can play even harder because they know they have got a really good backup or two really good backups to go give them minutes. have to measure your way through a game because you know you have to play 38, 39, 40 minutes. And for the thunder to be able to do that basically at every position is a tremendous advantage for them.

Starting point is 00:10:05 You mean at the center, you know, they've got other Jalen Williams, a really good player. And there's just got so much depth. It affords everybody the opportunity to go. Like I mean, it sounds like a stupid comparison, but like my son, Socrates. They're always short on guys. They go out and they play with one sub or no sub against teams that are 15, 16, 17 kids on them. And by the second half, they just wear you down because they're running these players in and waves. The Thunder are kind of doing that.

Starting point is 00:10:38 And that is a part of this series that there is literally nothing the Lakers can do about that. They can play with an energy and a focus and an intensity that is difficult for any team to match, including the Lakers, especially when the Lakers may be short one guy in Vando, who, by the way, happens to be, if nothing else, one of the dudes that you can count on to play at that type of energy level and super hard and sometimes change the tone of a game, or maybe in the case of going up against a Thundering Game 2 or in this series, match the tone of the game for 12 or so minutes, you lose that if Vando isn't available.

Starting point is 00:11:24 Like we mentioned before, if I had to guess if Vando can't play, JJ's going to just go with the eight guys as opposed to adding a ninth into the mix. You know, Brony, Bronny was the only other guy who's really been playing of late and his minutes disappear the minute Austin came back. as both of us thought would be the case.

Starting point is 00:11:49 Maybe Maxi Claibah gets a little bit of run just because without Vando specifically, if they run into size issues, maybe they decide that Maxi out there for six minutes could be useful, something like that. But my expectation is they're going to run with the five starters, Jake, Jackson, and Luke. And everybody, everybody's going to have to account for,

Starting point is 00:12:16 the things that Vando would have brought, you know, whether you're talking about somebody that you could put on Shea or the rebounding, whatever you look for from Vando, everybody else is going to have to account for it in a series where everybody was going to have to raise their level anyway, because the whole damn thing is being accounted for without Luca against arguably the best team in the league that they have no margin for error against with Luca, much less without it starts to get just kind of stupid after a little while like I I have I don't have a lot of I'm not it's hard for me to get angry at team you know the performance of the team you know guys you know it's a waste opportunity to like yeah they got it to within I think three in the

Starting point is 00:13:06 second half and or or it might have been four I don't remember but even with that there was never a sense that the team was in control, that they had, at least to me, that they had discovered something that Oklahoma City was doing that they could exploit or playing in a way that was sustainable for the last 18 minutes of the game, that they, that, you know, I believed at least that they would be able to continue the run that they were on that got them back in the game. But I'll offer one thing, the city from Corey. one thing I thought maybe like maybe and it is a big maybe because it was it's very much an outlier for what we typically see from shay so I need to see it more maybe they found ways to turn them over more than what you expect he turned them all over seven times which is an enormously high number for shay and in particular in the first half they were legitimately giving him fits like he was making passes and decisions that he just done does not make. I don't know how much of that was just specific to this game and a one-off

Starting point is 00:14:19 versus something the Lakers may have landed on that they can try to repeat. So perhaps I think we'll get more evidence in game too. But there are a lot of holes in need of filling. And that's why even somebody like Jared Vanderbilt, who if you consider him the ninth man in this nine-man rotation, it matters because the drop-off from Vando to whoever comes next is big enough that JJ hasn't wanted to play whoever that person is or probably isn't or probably isn't I'm sort of thinking the Lakers could look very similar you hope the shot making improves that's obviously something that has to get better in game two on Thursday it's just yeah we'll talk about it I'm sure an enormous amount ahead of

Starting point is 00:15:06 Thursday's game but like the focus of this series after game one where you look at and say Lakers didn't do anything really wrong necessarily. The Thunder weren't particularly great. I don't think, I didn't think they put in a particularly impressive performance. Not bad, but very baseline

Starting point is 00:15:28 for them. And the Lakers lost by 18. You look at it and say it's going to be hard for them to win four out of the next six, but that is just going to turn, and this will turn our focus for the rest you know i'm sure for for a lot of thursday's show stuff before the game it this the the the microscope that austin reeves now is going to be under for however many games

Starting point is 00:15:55 are left in this series is going to be incredibly intense and um is only going to make the challenge that he has harder uh because i mean if people weren't you know kind of taking a peek at them before, Andy. They're certainly doing it now. Yeah, absolutely. I'm sorry. Locked on Lakers on YouTube is where you're hanging out with over 38,000 subscribers to the program.

Starting point is 00:16:23 We'll be back later and help you get ready for game two. And maybe there are ways of Lakers pulling up. We'll see. See everyone next time.

Locked On Lakers - Daily Podcast On The Los Angeles Lakers - Jarred Vanderbilt's Injury Makes LA's Depth Problem vs. the Thunder Worse

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