Locked On Lakers - Daily Podcast On The Los Angeles Lakers - Kuminga Down to Los Angeles and Minnesota? What's One Thing Austin Reaves Can Improve?

Episode Date: August 26, 2026

There are a couple players still rattling around the NBA, unsigned. Two have limited options but likely return to their current teams (Benedict Mathurin, Jalen Duren) and one is Jonathan Kuminga, who currently has no home.  He does have suitors, though. Minnesota needs a forward and can sign him straight into their exception, but can't pay him as much as the Lakers, who would have to agree to contract terms and then figure out how to actually execute a trade. No easy task, given that the Hawks (who have no interest in bringing Kuminga back) already have too many players, and have zero need for anything the Lakers would be willing to offer. Are there enough other teams that would be incentivized by a second rounder? How many picks would the Lakers be willing to give up?  And that's all stuff that would assume that the Lakers decide that Kuminga is worth the assets, and could figure out a way to make Kuminga happy. Could they be willing to do a wink-wink nudge-nudge type deal where they sign him undermarket, then find a way to give a little boost after a successful first year?  Meanwhile, what about PJ Washington? He seems to think he's staying put. Which makes sense! Dallas isn't incentivized to trade him right now and should they ever get the itch, the Lakers are likely not going to have a package that outdoes other interested parties. That, by the way, is going to be a common theme for the next few years, which explains the continued interest in Kuminga despite some totally legitimate reservations. It's reasonable to wonder how much access they'll actually have to the most desirable options at that wing spot now and down the road.  Finally, answering a listener email, we're looking at something each player on the roster can do to improve for this season. We kick it off with Austin Reaves!  HOSTS: Andy and Brian Kamenetzky   SEGMENT 1: A plan for Kuminga?  SEGMENT 2: What about Washington?  SEGMENT 3: What can Reaves improve?    Photo Credit: Erik Williams-Imagn Images   Support Us By Supporting Our Sponsors! 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.   Odoo Great organizations win because operations matter. And that’s why you should get Odoo. Try for free today at https://Odoo.com/lockedon. FanDuel Today's episode is brought to you by FanDuel. Join all the action at https://FANDUEL.COMto play Daily Dingers and make your free pick on who’s hitting a homer this MLB season.   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.

It's down to Minnesota or the Lakers, reportedly, for Jonathan Kaminga. Plus, what is one thing each Laker could improve this year compared to last? 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 stopping by Lockdown Lakers. Brian Komeneski, Andy Kaminowski, plenty to cover over the course of this show for

Wednesday, make sure that you are subscribing whether to the YouTube channel, Lockdown Lakers on YouTube, where a lot of people are literally watching us do this show right now, often going live, at least in the off season, around 9.30 Pacific time. When we do the live show, you can subscribe, of course, to the audio product and should with Spotify, Apple, wherever you get your podcast. Make sure you are fully subscribed with everything to, you know, that way you don't miss, Andy. anything that we put out. Yeah, make sure, too, that you're leaving comments, that you're giving likes, all of that stuff. It juices the algorithms in our favor. It helps raise the visibility

of this show. It is very much appreciated. So please do that for us. So we, oh, well, geez, a few weeks ago now, it seems, I think it might have been, we were, we did a mailbag, put out a mailbag and did a mailbag episode. And included, one of the answers we got was, we'll get to it tonight, asked about ways in which one thing the Lakers could improve, each member of the roster could improve. So we'll start getting to that.

I thought it was an interesting question before we're done with tonight's show. But the other thing to remember, of course, is there's news, Andy, of sorts. Time is slipping away from, Jonathan Kamenga. At some point, he's going to have to make some kind of choice about what team he's going to be on. And by all reports, it seems that your choices at this point are the Lakers and Minnesota. Yeah, Jake Fisher over at Bleacher Report was doing his podcast, and he's somebody

that is very well-sourced as a newsbreaker and getting into these sorts of rumors, player movement, stuff like that, said, quote, it comes down to Minnesota or Los Angeles, Cominga, I think seems to prefer the Lakers. They have the most opportunity to negotiate there. Editor's note, I found that telling. Back to Fisher. Minnesota is limited to signing Kaminga to the taxpayer mid-level exception where he would walk into a starting job.

In both situations where Minnesota's then at the forward spot, the Lakers have been selling him on this vision of having him start next to Luca, they're going to have the spending power, in theory, to reward him next year if all goes to plan. That's all going to come to some conclusion here soon. I thought it would have happened last week, but I still have been told nothing to suggest that Cominga's situation is not coming down to the Lakers or the Timberwolves,

and that matches up with some of the reporting that we've seen and shared before on previous shows. I found a really interesting, Brian, Jake Fisher, mentioning the Lakers' ability to renegotiate this summer if Cominga has a good year. He didn't get into detail about that, but I assumed he meant since sign and trades have to be three years minimum, and you cannot have player options.

You can't have team options either, but what you can have are non-guaranteed or partially guaranteed years. So maybe what Fisher was alluding to was the idea that they work out some type of number as a starting point in a side and trade with comminga. It in all likelihood will not be to Jonathan Kaminga's full liking, but they are saying to him, look, do what we ask of you this year, have a good season,

and wink, wink under the table, we will tacitly without expressly agree that we will not guarantee seasons two and three in order to come up with a brand new contract that everybody likes. And, you know, let's have something of a prove-it season. And then if it all works out, you will end up being made whole. I don't know if the Lakers necessarily are going to be in a position to even imply that they could give him more than the full,

the non-taxpayer mid-level exception, the full mid-level, just because it would require a lot of machinations to create cap space to go beyond that. but in all honesty, if Jonathan Caminga and his rep have any type of come to Jesus moment, I think they will recognize next season. If Caminga hits the market, it's likely going to be difficult for him to get, I think, more than a full mid-level anyway. So that's a pretty, whether Caminga fully likes that or not, I think in any realistic world, that's a pretty good scenario. for him to potentially.

It would be. I think that's really what he was. Initially, I was confused by that too. And I and kind of rereading and all that. I've not heard of the podcast. I want to read the transcript. I heard it. I mean, but I, the transcript is basically the gist of all of it. Right. I know. I'm not, I don't think anything is being misquoted.

I actually think it's more of a phrasing thing. I think he's talking about Minnesota as the team that can roll. Okay. All right. All right. And, you know, he's saying, you know, Minnesota's in the power forward spot. The Lakers, and he kind of compares it to the Lakers selling the vision of him starting next to Luca. And then goes back to Minnesota who would have the spending power in theory to reward him next year if it goes to plan.

That's based on a one-year deal. The reason that I think it's worth, you know, the other thing is like, I get it. You could be right about that, by the way. I think. I think I am. You may be. Just because there's no way to do that with with comminga and the deal, you know,

if they were to do it like the scenario you're describing. And the reason is I know. There are always to do it. You just have to make sure that you're very good at it. The fan and then there's this scenario. I mean, we live in a world where Gary Trent Jr. just got four and six. So these things can be done. And the league is investigating, which to me is different because that's like backwards

circumcences like a salary cap circumvention in order to shoot yourself in the foot. Like if you're ever going to know what wink wink nudge, you have to pay this deal. That actually should be the punishment. Right. Exactly. Like you made a side deal with Gary Trent and. gosh darn it, now you got to honor it.

Like, that's the punishment here. Like, the lead can't really do anything worse to the bucks than they're doing to themselves. But, like, you know, it would be pretty nakedly obvious if Kaminga signed for, you know, in a signing trade for three years and 10 million, you know, 30 million or whatever it is. And Lakers voided an incredibly player, team friendly contract by giving up those two team options or something like that and brought him back at a bigger number. number that just that that is so such naked obviously naked salary cap circumvention uh you know and the rules of the of signing trades and all these other things um and i know we live in a world now

where people are sort of convinced that it's open season and it doesn't matter and it doesn't and you know the the kawai leonard of it all i don't think though that the the Lakers would do something like that for Jonathan Comingo, particularly at a time when, you know, there's so much uncertainty around the front office and around the ownership and around all of these other things. It would be sort of reminiscent, I guess, of the Joe Smith thing with Minnesota.

What is that? 25 years ago or something like this point where, I believe, if I remember correctly, Minnesota essentially did that where they Well, I think the money Smith got was less than what I'm talking about in some type of sign and trade with comminga. And again, you may be correct that it was a phrasing thing and I'm missing. Right, but I'm just saying like it would be a scenario like that where they sort of did the wink, wink, nudge, thing and kind of went around and they got

Minnesota got hammered for it. I just I think that we are, I don't think that's something the Lakers would do for him. And I think the scenario is just too obvious. But the reason I think is interesting just because

the climate that we're in now is such that I think kind of fans assume that anything is something there was one need to get into it because it's a bit of a nothing burger of the story but like there was the thing that that was put out on uh Tuesday about like lebrons association with guggenheim on his offseason you know off court business deals and all that

kind of stuff most a lot of it was actually fairly well known um but the the rules are there and i still think they'd be enforced and look Maybe there is a way to, I mean, look, if you could do it that way and get around the three-year rule, but that is basically a way to gut the NBA's three-year-old. So we can talk a little bit about this. We'll talk a little bit about the, I guess I just, yeah, we'll get into it. Yeah. And some questions about improvement, how the Lakers, individual things the Lakers could do player by player to improve going into the season.

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the premium status, it deserves an Indeed.com slash podcast. Just go to Indeed.com slash podcast right now, support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Indeed.com slash podcast. Terms and conditions apply, need to hire. This is a job for Indeed sponsored jobs. You were saying, Andy, about comminga? Yeah, I mean, I don't want to get too into the weeds in so far of us what might be caps or convention, non-capsurconvention for something that I may have misinterpreted in the first place. I will say, though, that I think if comminga was signed for, let's say, I'm throwing this out, 10, 3 and 30, something like that in a sign and trade, and you knocked off the last two years of those deal because comminga played really well and re-uped for something like, I don't know, 4 and 60.

So it's basically a bump of 5 million per season and longer security. I think you could, whether true or not, I think, get away with an explanation of the guy outplayed his contract. We wanted to give him security, reward him. And I don't think the monetary discrepancy is that massive in this NBA. And it's not like they offered him something. It's not like they would offer him in that scenario. The first go around, the original around 10 mil a season, something that was well below market. If anything, they were offering comming up above market because the market for him right now doesn't really.

scenario like that, I guess you could probably sell it where you're only giving him, you know, because otherwise the league shouldn't allow $12 million, $2 million or $3 million a year. But I think it starts to get more than that. I think it becomes, it becomes tricky. I mean, I, otherwise the league really should not allow you to be able to do a sign and trade where the last two years could theoretically be not guaranteed. Like, I feel like in some ways, you're kind of opening up, I don't know, the opportunity for shenanigans.

I would say still, I would have some reservations about Kaminga regardless. I am not as wild about bringing men in the first place as I think at least some of the people that feel like the Lakers simply have to bring in the best possible wing, the best possible for it out there, even if it's more Mr. Wright now than Mr. Wright. I would rather try to find Mr. Wright, if possible, because I don't think this team is going to win a championship with or without Jonathan Kaminga. But, again, assuming I interpreted this correctly by Fisher, I don't think it would be something that would get the Lakers in a lot of trouble.

If I misinterpreted it, then it's a moot point. But I still, I am fairly lukewarm on the prospect of Kaminga to begin. Before we get to PJ Washington, I think it's just the question really becomes, how confident are you that let's say the Lakers, because it really does seem to be what they're trying to do, how confident are you? How confident are you that the Lakers are going to be able to find the guy for a mid-level, 15 and a half, whatever it turns out to be, which is starting to become, it's worth noting, it's starting to become the way the new economics of the league work. It, you know, the new CBA is working in the sense of driving down a lot of, of those salaries and stuff like that. It's maybe spreading things a little bit more equally among players.

Do you believe that the player that you want will be out there, ideally, if everybody plays well, ideally to sign into what you have? because you don't want to be trading guys out and creating holes to fill holes, if that makes sense. So if you look at that and your Lakers management, you say, you know what, there are three or four guys. We're pretty confident and be available next year. In one way or another, we think we can move into our roster that are better than comminga. They're just flat out better. And there will be better fits, the better defenders, the more established.

They are better fits offensively because comminga is a guy who likes to have. the ball in his hands. And while I think you could argue that maybe in the second unit, there's options there if he starts and you overlaps him, if you're a ball dominant player being paired with Luca Donchurch and Austin Reeves may not be for you. But the flip side is for the reasons and go back to listen to people listen to Monday, Tuesday show, there are a lot of reasons to, you know, there's sort of the ancillary knock-on effects of filling that spot with a rotation caliber player in terms of how it spreads

out over the rest of the roster that are legitimately tempting even if you acknowledge the risks of comminga himself well it's going to be it'll be difficult in one way that laker fans were hoping for because if you ask PJ Washington this was something that was in mark stein's great substact stein line everyone should be subscribing to what he doesn't a lot of work actually with Jake Fisher. He noted a local interview with DLLS and with PJ Washington. He was asked about whether he expected to be on Dallas's opening night roster. He said, super confident about those prospects. I've had long talks with Maasai, our GM, and the whole team. So I'm super confident I'll be a Maverick. This is where I want to be. I'm super excited to be here.

and I can't wait to get things going. Later, he actually talked about his role, like that he's going to be a leader, quote, obviously going out each and every night, just being myself, being aggressive on both ends of the floor, and trying to lead as much as I can this year, using my voice and just to be the best vet I can be for the young guys. And I'll be honest, I mean, whatever Messiah Jury told PJ Washington is not a blood oath, and I'm sure PJ Washington is aware of this.

he's been in the league for a while. That being said, though, I do think it is believable, if nothing else, that Dallas would hold off on trading PJ Washington before the season began, A, just so they can get an idea of where they are in this developmental curve, particularly with Kyrie Irving back, and if he stays on the court, you know, they may feel like we might be able to push for a play-in spot. Oh, I absolutely believe they think they can push for a playoff spot. And we would like to try to get Cooper Flagg that type of experience.

And that being the case, someone like PJ Washington could be helpful. Also, too, if they feel like one way or another, we're probably going to end up moving PJ. I think there are odds of the best offer possible increase in December anyway when so many more players around the league become trade eligible. Unless there's another team that just says we want PJ Washington, damn it, and we're going to get ahead of this. And they just make an offer right now to Dallas to just try to take them off the market. Yeah.

Strikes me as unlikely, but I'm just saying otherwise it actually makes sense for Dallas to hang on to Washington for now, as opposed to this feeling like PJ messaging what was posturing to him. Well, I think there's no reason for Dallas to start the year trying to dismantle the roster. I mean, there's there's, there's, they, they think did their sort of last bit of tanking last year. They're going to be too good, I think, short of just doing egregious things, if Kyrie is healthy and Cooper Flagg continues on his trajectory and lively, they've just got too many good players to be a team that's that bad.

And eventually you've got to stop doing it. And so, you know, I think there are more teams like that now. You know, the new rules are such that it, at the very least, disincentivizes to some degree some of these teams that have really had, to kind of pull out all the stops, you know, Utah last year, really had to pull out all the stops to make sure they kept their pick and whatever.

But I think there's me a little bit less of that. And the other thing to remember about this, I think that's really important is I agree with you. Dallas, if they're going to trade PJ, they're going to do it later in the years. They'll do it the deadline. They'll do it in the off season or whatever. But whenever they do it,

there's almost certainly going to be a team out there that can put together a better offer than the Lakers. And that is going to be the consistent through line of the next four years, probably. And that, again, gets to why there are even, you know, why the Lakers, whether it's Kaminga himself or somebody with Kaminga-like drawbacks or shortcomings, the Lakers, the Lakers very well may have. to take a risk on someone. Like I was a big proponent of like if you could do it for the right price and maybe you can move off of Vanderbilt's contract, like move off two or three contracts at once that you don't like.

And, you know, three rotation spots that you're not going to use. And bring in somebody like Christian Brown, if that's what Denver was doing. Like I get the risks. Brown is signed for the next decade, I think, basically. It's a 25-year extension. It's a five-year extension that kicks in this year. And so it's like he's on your roster for a long time.

It makes a good amount of money. But the only way the Lakers are going to be able to get, you know, sort of a superior player, even this offseason was to make, take some risk in doing that because everybody knows what PJ Washington is, PJ Washington's good. And everybody's, you know, there are a lot of good teams that are going to want his services. Should he become available? and the Lakers aren't going to be able to compete on that trade market without giving up players of value. And then you're obviously potentially creating a hole to fill a hole.

And so I do ultimately think that they're probably more than anything looking at that free agent slot as the mechanism to make this work, whether it's, you know, you take that risk this year or you probably maybe even take a risk next year. So just something to think about. the context of how the Lakers will be able to approach some of these deals. All right. We'll get into the viewer, the viewer, the listener mail. I'm not sure. Could be both, hopefully both.

Where could individual Lakers improve? What's one thing that they could all do? We'll start walking through the roster next. So it's real quick. I'm seeing Kirk Hamilton 1615 put up an interesting comment on the chat. Cam Whitmore in on a two-way over, aka Carrickay. Whitmore was bought out by

who? I've lost track of it. Was it Washington? I think Washington was the team that he was just on. Right. They let him go. He was part of the five-team deal that ultimately sent Peyton Watson to

Cleveland and Dennis Schrooter to Charlotte. He was, because the Wizards were involved to that I don't remember exactly. He was one of the guys who lost a spot on a team because of that. I do not remember. It doesn't really matter.

He's a free agent. Traded to Cavs and the Watson trade Watson. That's what I think. From Washington. Thank you. Thank you, Kirk. It's funny. Like, there is a school of thought.

Like, the Lakers, if they did that, I wouldn't really care. But I would wonder, like, at this. point he's been on a couple teams now where he's had the opportunity Kim Whitmore has to show he could be a certain type of player

either like a role player on a contending team spread your wings a little bit on Washington but it just hasn't worked and you know there's obviously I guess some raw talent there but for a team like the Lakers I wonder I always wonder what's the best use of their two-way

guys and I think it is ultimately on players that you really think would thrive in a 5 through 10 role in a rotation, six through 10, something like that. Because, you know, and this, by the way, is kind of an argument against Kaminga at a different level. You need to have these guys, whether they're in the G-League or the two-way guys,

doing something that's going to be their role on an NBA team. And I just don't think Whitmore is that kind of player. I think the Lakers, if you look at who they've given those roles too, are looking for NBA caliber players who can go fill a role. I don't disagree with anything you're saying. For me, the no is simpler. I'm looking for more of a player type like AK or K or K or K, both in the way he plays and especially the physicality,

like the actual literal player type, like big wing, more than I'm looking for Cam Whitmore. Yeah, I agree. I mean, for me, it's honestly that simple. I was just saying, you could substitute mangan in there. you could Oh, hell no. But all I'm saying,

any of their, any of their two-way guys. And so it was more, like, it was an interesting thing because like Whitmore is obviously a name that still has a little bit of interest around.

I think Mannion, Akerike, and Columa all fit roles that the Lakers are trying to develop similar to what you were saying as supplementary pieces around Luca, Austin,

and Walker, Kessler more so than Cam Whitmore does. Like in a lot of ways, I think it will be, I think it'll be easier to find someone to play the Cam Whitmore role, if not Cam Whitmore himself, then it will be for the Lakers to find hopefully the Diamond in the Rough, Akerichase, or Columas, or a defender, like someone with Chris Mannion's defensive chops, like he's got to develop some more offense. But he is much better at any single NBA skill than Whitmore has shown to be at anything I just think if you're looking for a Cam Whitmore type for what Cam Whitmore seems to do

and also the type of player that he seems to want to be, I think it will be easier to find that, but there's also less of a need for that on this team. Yeah. It's just an interesting way. It's just a way of sort of thinking about how you use those two-way guys and what they're. it's sort of like why when you know coby buffkin would have these runs in in the g league of you know 25 28 32 just like i'm like that's cool i don't know but i didn't i don't know what that does for me like he's not going to do that with the the NBA so like what else can you do what is what is your skill set that you can bring and it turns out he

doesn't really have one as sort of a four a guy um all right uh the the the um the the mailback question and he was an interesting one it gets to the idea of working through the roster what's one thing that every uh every player in the roster could improve like pick one thing to get a better you know i know we'd pull the side like reeves vando brawny connect we'll walk through the whole roster let's let's let's start with reeves and vando just because they were the thumbnail uh pick guys so we stay we stay faithful to the visuals that we promised the audience well that works Let's do like the Academy Awards. We'll give a big win first.

We'll do Reeves. Well, there's four guys in the headline stack. We're not going to have time to get to all four. So let's narrow it down, starting with Reeves and Vando. We can start with Reeves. The one area of improvement that I narrowed down for Reeves, and just overarching, Reeves needs to be better at everything, just because he has tripled his salad.

and his station on this team has been elevated. So everything needs to be better. That's part of the gig. But one thing that I honed in on is Austin improving his game in ways that relies less on physicality. Because I think the physical nature of Austin's game, like the specific parts of it that are physical, even though I don't think Austin has thought of as a physical player, I think he has very, he should be. because he has specific physicality parts of his game that in particular, I think, have caught up to him the last two to three post seasons. Like his scoring is predicated in part by his ability to draw fouls.

And I think he sometimes plays in a way that is about an expectation of a whistle. And he can get very frustrated when those whistles don't come. And every possession where he seeks contact and finds it without. a call. It's abuse on his body that adds up without an immediate payoff. And I think this could happen through better outside shooting, as we've discussed before, like pull-up threes in particular. You know, they represented the largest chunk of his shots from deep last year and he hit it just 32%. Like, that's got to be better. And overall, he is a good three-point shooter for his position, but he's not great. And I think it would be helpful for his overall stamina and health if

that shot became better. I like trying to get to the rim more often without contact in mind as opposed to just seeking shots at the rim. Like per cleaning the glass, he was in the 98th percentile for his position for overall percentage at the rim, which obviously that is elite. But he was only in the 62nd percent for frequency. And I do wonder, I know some of that can get skewed by trips to the line, but also if the number could be higher if he thought more rim first on drives as opposed to contact first and

free throws, and then defensively finding a way to contribute that doesn't involve taking as many charges. It's great that he's willing to do it. He was tied for sixth in the league last year for charges per game and like that is sacrificing his body. But again, I think it adds up to him, adds up for him. And after a while, I think that toll, we are starting to see it in the playoffs. yeah it's funny like i actually picked the same thing we didn't talk about this before um just you know to to keep it fresh but my big thing was was to have fewer excuse me fewer possessions where the the point of the drive seems to be less about scoring than it is about i'm going to get to the line i'm going to draw the contact um you know that's different from i'm going to

drive, to score, and if I get contact, that's fine. And my reasoning behind that was, you know, the Lakers, while they are younger, while they are more athletic, significantly more athletic, I think they were last year, are still not going to be a team that is particularly, you know, I think set to be great defensively. And where they are going to be better defensively is when you can get, you know, the team back and set. and you have your back line and Walker Kessler and you have all these other things.

And I don't think it's a matter of turnovers per se. Like, you know, Austin, he tends to be more turnover prone on direct line drive, you know, to the basket and all that kind of stuff. But he's not, I think, a heavy turnover player. But bad endings to possessions, shots that aren't really threatening to go in. And then the occasional turnover on the drive where you're really more concerned about contact,

I just think it's the kind of thing that's, it's going to take away too many of their possessions and set them up poorly on the other end. But your point about the sort of the abuse that you're taking, he's never going to be, not only won't he, he can't take that aspect of contact and drawing fouls and getting the line. That's forever part of his game. And if you didn't, you know, if the Lakers were worried about that, they shouldn't have signed him. Um, but I think you can

limit those things and mitigate them some if at the very least when you drive, you think you're driving to score as opposed to get hammered off the way to the basket. And let's say, I guess you can pick up that. There are times when guys like him and, you know, Hardin and, you know, all these players know that if they had a little bit of a change of speed, you can draw a pretty, you know, a foul that isn't going to hurt you and all that. But generally, I agree with you 100%. Yeah, I mean, you're correct. I'm not looking for Austin to not want to go to the line at all.

Like, it is a big part of his game. And that can be very valuable if you're good at it, which he is. I just think he is somebody that it seems like at least because the last three playoffs series have been underwhelming for Austin. And I know there have been elements of injury to this, but I also wonder how much of the injury is the injury. It takes an enormous amount of abuse. Right.

Like you said, people don't think of him as a physical player. I mean, just because he's sort of like he's not a big bruising, whatever. But he plays in an enormously physical way. And look, I mean, he's not old, but he's not 22. and there needs to be an element of, I had to keep myself on the floor. Like, he can't help the team if he's not playing. Well, the other reason, too,

that he really needs to find ways to, again, not be as dependent on getting to the line with his offense. You're not going to necessarily get as many calls in the playoffs. Like Austin actually got a fair amount of calls, but you can't always depend on it. And then in the meantime, And again, I think this is in part the physical toll catching up to him at the worst time. The last three years, his outside shooting has cratered.

And even this year, he got to the rim with decent frequency, but his finishing was not where it needed to be either. And again, I think this all is a matter of physicality catching up to him in the worst time. Yeah, I mean, because I, you know, that's, it really is the outside shooting that is, that has driven down his offensive numbers as opposed to an inability to get into the paint. He was able to do that even against Oklahoma City.

You've got to be able to shoot and you need your legs for that. It's also, I'm very curious to see just how certain aspects of his game in regards to this shift without LeBron there, because his ball handling, his ball distribution, all that stuff

is going to be a little there as opposed to kind of get it an attack because Luca and LeBron are there too as, you know, set up guys and distributors and things like that. So Austin's role is going to shift a little bit with that. So, all right. So we'll get deeper into this stuff for shows over the rest of the week. Lockdown Liquors on YouTube is where it can hang out with over 39,000 subscribers.

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