Locked On Lakers - Daily Podcast On The Los Angeles Lakers - Lakers: Anthony Davis Has Abdominal Strain, Will Be Re-Evaluated In a Week

Starting point is 00:00:00 Hey, everyone, welcome to Locked on Lakers for Wednesday special bonus episode. Anthony Davis going to be out at least a week. Hopefully not more. We'll talk about it 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 Lockdown Lakers.

Starting point is 00:00:28 First listen to every day Monday through Friday, no matter how or where you get your podcasts, always free, never find paywall. Lockdown Lakers on YouTube. is where over 27,000 subscribers, Andy, are all a little concerned now that the news has officially come out, the Lakers announcing that Anthony Davis will be sent back to Los Angeles after suffering an abdominal injury in Philadelphia on Tuesday. He will be evaluated in about a week.

Starting point is 00:00:56 So no indication yet on the severity of it. They didn't say like grade one, grade two, grade three. what we know is Anthony Davis will not play for a week and now enters the twilight zone of Lakers injuries, which is sort of the reevaluation space. We never seem to know how long that's going to take. That they're reevaluating him in a week struck me as cautiously optimistic because the longer you go without a reevaluation period, at least in theory, the more severe it is because The only reason you bother with a public reevaluation is because you are reasonably confident somebody could be close to getting back on the floor.

Starting point is 00:01:43 Like there's no reason if you think something is going to take six weeks. There's no reason for a public reevaluation in two weeks because all you're going to be telling your fans is dude's not ready to return. You're just going to piss everyone off. So that struck me as something to hang a little bit of cautious positivity towards. Um, beyond that, like, it just, it could be worse. It's obviously not the worst outcome. That they are willing to, right, that they are willing to publicly circle back to the table within a week is all things being equal, I think, relatively positive news. Um, based on based on how this organization handles the public messaging of anything with injuries. I, that struck me as something to feel, again, all things being equal fairly good about.

Starting point is 00:02:42 It's certainly, I think it's certainly fair to say that, that it indicates that they're thinking it's a one to three week injury as opposed to, you know, six to ten week injury. Right, exactly, because otherwise you don't bother doing that. And, you know, the non-specificity is worrisome, not in a way that I'm being critical to the Lakers, but just knowing that ab, issues, you know, ab strains. That is a very tricky area to get injured. It is very easy to aggravate. It's an area of your body that you use for everything. So the Lakers are going to have to be really methodical

Starting point is 00:03:22 about this, really patient about this. And in the meantime, everybody is just going to have to try to ride out a storm that is hopefully no longer than one to two weeks. If it, you know, Over the course of the next week, the Lakers play tomorrow Thursday in Washington. They are in New York on Saturday, Tuesday the 4th of February. They play the Clippers again at Intuit Dome and then return home on February 6th. So a week and a day basically would be a week from tomorrow the game against Golden State. I think it's probably reasonable to think he will miss. I think at the very least, expectations-wise,

Starting point is 00:04:10 you would put it in your head like, okay, Anthony Davis is going to be out at least through that game on the sixth against Golden State. Maybe he comes back earlier. Great. But then we'll see what the Lakers say. But I wouldn't count on Anthony Davis being back before February 8th against the Pacers,

Starting point is 00:04:34 which, of course, is being set up for the Miles Turner revenge game after the Lakers requirement, the deadline. I was going to say. The softening of the blow of Anthony Davis being gone will be brought back by Miles Turner being a Laker. I mean, really what you need to be doing if you're a Laker fan is just watching the standings right now. Unfortunately, the Pacers are eight and two over the last 10.

Starting point is 00:04:56 Unless they truly just do not want to stay in the Miles Turner business, they have absolutely zero reason to move him. Or I guess if Miles Turner... It's right up there with the Walker Kessler talk of things. Well, no. I mean, Miles Turner makes... I mean, finish. Like, I obviously,

Starting point is 00:05:13 there are more reasons to trade Turner. He's older. He's near the end of a contract and all these other things. But until it becomes more clear from Indiana's perspective and stuff like that, that they really are looking to move him, there, the

Starting point is 00:05:29 the circumstances on the ground, like you say, soft Western Conference, team finally starting to play like they... Soft Eastern Conference. Right. Soft Eastern Conference. The team is starting to play kind of like they hoped they would at the beginning of the year. The Pacers got off to a very mid-start and were one of the more kind of quietly disappointing teams around the NBA.

Starting point is 00:05:52 They are starting to play significantly better. that part of it makes it unlikely to me that they will trade him. But we'll see. Either way, like, you know, the chances of the Lakers trading for a guy who can sort of solve the problem is non-existent. Because you can't trade for an Anthony Davis replacement. But we did talk about this for today's show, the big show, the idea of how, a Davis injury potentially changes Rob Polankas approach to the deadline, which is coming up in what, like a week basically?

Starting point is 00:06:34 If the answer seems to be one to three weeks, we'll just kind of work with that for now. That's a very different scenario for Rob Polinka in terms of looking at the deadline and where the Lakers could be after a certain stretch of time than it would be if you knew AD was going to be gone for, you knew he was going to be gone for six weeks, you know, or, you know, Jalen Johnson out for the season with Atlanta, you know, with a, with a labrum tear. Like that, that's definitive. You know that as a, as a GM in Atlanta. So, if it is that short time frame, like we talked about for today's show, that probably shouldn't change your approach if you're the Lakers. And, you know, you know,

Starting point is 00:07:25 in terms of how you think of the deadline. I wouldn't think. No. I mean, if internally, like, you know, what they message externally is however they choose to handle this publicly. But internally, they need to get together and be like, no, seriously, no BS. Like, how long do you really think he's going to be out? Like, we need to know, we're not holding your feet to the fire,

Starting point is 00:07:51 but we need you to give us what you think is the most. realistic estimate possible, even acknowledging all the uncontrollable variables. What do you think? And if it is something like, we're pretty confident one to three weeks, then I agree. You treat this like you would AD being here because that means he's going to be available for at least half of February, all of March, all of April, and all of the playoffs. So you would handle this any way you want to. And as you mentioned, unless you're trading for like a really upper end center in the league. If say you decided, I wouldn't do this, but let's say you just decided that you wanted Jonas Valanchunis, Valenchunis is as decent an option to be not as good

Starting point is 00:08:42 as Anthony Davis as anybody else for like a couple weeks. You know what I'm saying? That's the move you would make anyway if you wanted to bring in Robert Williams the third, who again is not going to be as good as Anthony Davis, but he's a better option to be not as good as Anthony Davis than Jackson Hayes. And you bring him in and he eventually goes back to being Anthony Davis's backup, and that's why you traded for him in the first place. I would treat this like AD is going to be available if you really feel confident internally that it's one in three weeks.

Starting point is 00:09:17 If you're not, I will say this, though, if you're not confident and you're thinking it could be longer, that I don't know what you people were thinking with a one week reevaluation period. Well, yeah, right, that's that's a whole other issue. Sure, sure. I would say this too. You know, the loss of Davis for, we'll say 10 days, just again, just putting out numbers and trying to be both conservative and read the tea leaves of what the information that we're given to this point might say.

Starting point is 00:09:44 It also doesn't change to me. Like the Lakers need to make the best deal to get the best talent that they can't. I don't think while the. the center position gets the most attention. I don't necessarily think it is automatically their biggest need or the one where... I don't think it is their biggest need. And so, you know, we discussed this Wednesday, you know, today's show, we've discussed this a bunch. Like, they have other needs.

Starting point is 00:10:04 And to me, it makes very little sense to acquire a lesser big than you might be able to get a better wing or a better guard or whatever it might be. And again, I don't think this should change that either. You know, the Lakers are going to be forced to play, likely forced to play, a few games at least, with a really bad center rotation. This is how it's going to be. And they're going to have to go small and they're going to have to rely on other things. And, you know, is that going to be a problem tomorrow in Washington? It shouldn't be a huge problem. Anthony Davis has torched the Wizards in part because.

Starting point is 00:10:47 because they do not have any size or defense, interior defensive note, you know, Saar isn't that guy yet. For what it's worth, he's currently dealing with an injury, an ankle sprain right now. He's day to day for tonight's game against the Raptors and Malcolm Brognan is out altogether. But Valentzun is a terrible defender. Like there's, so there are, you know, is it going to be a problem Saturday in New York? Yep. Is it going to be a problem against the clippers? It sure is. You know, Zubots is a tough, you know, tough cover for anybody right now. And, you know, the physicality was hard on AD when you, you know, that's going to be a problem. Like it. But you can't, you can't make transactions based on, you know, the, the three or four games, you know, five games you've got coming up without him. You have to think of the larger picture. Especially when your team that is not steeped in spare assets.

Starting point is 00:11:51 Correct. If you were the thunder with like five billion picks laying around and you said, you know what? Use one. We will burn a couple of them in a frivolous way just to get to the next couple weeks. Sure. The Lakers aren't that team. So they have to address their most pressing needs that they would if AD was available.

Starting point is 00:12:12 Right. And they're going to play small. It'll be helpful, you know, that Jared. Vanderbilt who missed Tuesday's game sort of injury maintenance kind of thing, presumably back on the floor Thursday, and then within every other day, Cadence is able to play. Rui is back. They need to get Dave Vincent back on the floor. They can get through this stretch, you know, hopefully playing 500 ball or something like that.

Starting point is 00:12:40 But it's, it is going to be a major, major test. So we'll see. Any other information that is surfaced over regarding AD, we will certainly bring that to you. We'll have a regular show for Thursday ahead of Thursday night's game. So plenty of opportunities to stay updated on what's going on as more information comes out. But again, Anthony Davis out for at least a week. We'll be re-evaluated next week in Los Angeles. We will be back for the bigger show, but Andy, but first.

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Locked On Lakers - Daily Podcast On The Los Angeles Lakers - Lakers: Anthony Davis Has Abdominal Strain, Will Be Re-Evaluated In a Week

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