Locked On Lakers - Daily Podcast On The Los Angeles Lakers - Luka Dončić Dials Up Late Magic, LeBron Excels In 111-103 Win Over New Orleans

Episode Date: January 7, 2026

It wasn't a work of art, but it was enough to get the job done. After being outplayed in the third quarter, the Lakers entered the fourth down seven in their visit to New Orleans against the Pelicans.... At that point, LeBron James took over, looking extremely spry as he put on an offensive show (including one steal and finish at the other end). Luka Dončić hit a pair of improbable 3's late, and the defense held down the Pels en route to a 111-103 win. Overall, it was probably LeBron's strongest game of the year, finishing with 30/8/8. He was able to put the ball on the floor and get to the rim, which should help him get a little more space on his jumper. (James was 3-5 from 3-point range on the night.) Dončić didn't hit a three in the first half, but had two big ones late - including one circus shot to bail the Lakers out on a bad trip - and along the way, threw two of the most incredible lob passes you'll ever see. FInal line, 30 points (11-22 shooting) along with 10 dimes. The Lakers also saw very strong contributions from Deandre Ayton (18/11) and Jarred Vanderbilt (7/8/4, with tons of energy). And the defense really tightened up. New Orleans was held to 17 points in the final frame, and while some of that can be attributed to it being the Pelicans, but overall the Lakers did a good job with specific strategic actions, like putting heavy ball pressure on Zion Williamson. And importantly, the Lakers had (with the exception of the opening minutes of the third quarter) played hard, even when they weren't playing well. Which matters a lot. Had they sleepwalked through bigger stretches, they could have dropped a very important game. Wednesday, the Lakers are in San Antonio, and will still be shorthanded. Really big to pick up the win on Tuesday.  HOSTS: Andy and Brian Kamenetzky  SEGMENT 1: Luka and LeBron come up big, Lakers win.  SEGMENT 2: It helps to try all the time.  SEGMENT 3: Who plays against the Spurs on Wednesday?  Everydayer Club  If 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/everydayerclubSupport Us By Supporting Our Sponsors!Rocket MoneyLet Rocket Money help you reach your financial goals faster. Join at http://RocketMoney.com/LOCKEDONBetterhelpBetterHelp makes it easy to get matched online with a qualified therapist.Sign up and get 10% off at https://BetterHelp.com/NBA. QuoMake this the year where no opportunity — and no customer — slips away.Try Quo for free plus get 20% off your first 6 months when you go tohttps://Quo.com/lockedonnba.Quo — no missed calls, no missed customers. GametimeToday's episode is brought to you by Gametime. Download the Gametime app, create an account, and use code LOCKEDONNBA for $20 off your first purchase. Terms and conditions apply.FanDuelToday's episode is brought to you by FanDuel. The NBA and NFL seasons are here, visit the FanDuel App today and start planning your futures bets now. 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.

Transcript
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Starting point is 00:00:00 Luca Donchich finds some late magic. LeBron James finds the fountain of youth and the Lakers. Find a big win in New Orleans. 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,
Starting point is 00:00:29 sometimes on weekends and even on Andy occasionally on holidays, no matter how or where you get your podcast. This one's always going to be free for you. behind paywall. Lockdown Lakers on YouTube is where you can go hang out with over 37,000 subscribers. But no matter how you do it, whether it's Apple iTunes, whether that's Spotify, the aforementioned YouTube channel, no matter how you get the show, you're part of making the Lockdown Podcast Network, the number one podcast network in this or any other known universe. I'm Brian Kamenetsky with Andy Kamenetsky, big win for the Lakers on Tuesday night.
Starting point is 00:01:01 They beat the New Orleans Pelicans 11, 103 in a game that wasn't necessarily. artfully played, but played with some spirit by the Lakers. And big shots, especially late from Luca Donchish, an outstanding performance from LeBron James. Really overall, I thought, a lot to like in this game. So we'll get to it all in just a moment right after we let you know that today's episode is brought to by Fandul before tip off. Check the Fandual app and see what's dropping during NBA happy hour every Friday from 6 to 7.30 p.m. Eastern. 11-103, Lakers use a really strong fourth quarter to pick up a, I'm not going to say, a must win,
Starting point is 00:01:44 but again, they could not afford to give away at the very least. It was a super important win. They have to stack as many as possible during this January that is a relatively soft schedule for however long they don't have Rui Hachamura in the month. Gabe Vincent was possibly going to play tonight against New Orleans. He ended up sitting, but JJ said before the game, he expects him to be available for San Antonio on Wednesday. But regardless, we're not going to have Austin Reeves for the entire month of January. Every single win that you can get matters a lot, regardless of opponent quality, regardless of how you end up getting the win.
Starting point is 00:02:30 And one of the things we'll talk about, I wouldn't say that this was one of the best games. the Lakers have played in terms of just overall quality of play. But there were things that happened in this game, whether you're talking about a handful of individual performances, or if you're just talking about increased team-wide synergy and the synergy between Luca and LeBron, those were all things that I actually thought were really good in this game, potentially promising, even if you wouldn't look at the four quarters of this game,
Starting point is 00:03:06 as a whole and say this was the Lakers. I certainly hope this was not the Lakers at their best. If this was Lakers at their best, they're actually in trouble. But they don't have to be at their best right now. It's January. Right. And look, I mean, games are short-handed. Games like this. I mean, the expectation, it's always fun.
Starting point is 00:03:23 And people always like, oh, New Orleans is a bad team. Go out, beat them by 25, you know, all that kind of stuff. Fair. And sometimes that happens. But most of the time it doesn't. Most of the time, you've got to play a full game to beat. to beat a team. You know, the Pelicans, if nothing else, play hard.
Starting point is 00:03:39 And they do have some, so it's a bad team with individually some decent players on it. Dude, future Laker, Trey Murphy, the third, 42 points. You know, Zion can still do some stuff that it's disturbing. Jose Alvarado is a pain in the ass. I mean, they've got enough players that you got to show up and play Derek Queen, Jeremiah Fears, like, you know, young players who are good. The queen quietly almost had a triple double in this game. You wouldn't have noticed because, you know, it was quietish in terms of the stats, 10 points, 13 rebounds, 8 assists, also 4 turnovers, and also the Pelicans lost.
Starting point is 00:04:19 And in particular, over the course of the fourth quarter, they really began losing hard. And it got overshadowed by, again, the 42 points by Tray Murphy III. But they have talent. Yes. They don't have talent that is cohesive, but they have. have talent. You got to play. You got to play the game. And so, you know, the Lakers, one of the, the thing that, you know, obviously, you know, you can look at the individual performances. We will. Luke Adonchich, 30 points. I mean, if there's such a thing as a quiet 30,
Starting point is 00:04:50 we kind of had it. 11 of 22, 10 assists. He had two steals. He had a block. And, you know, so, you know, he had three, three pointers, two of which came late in the fourth, both of which were very important. LeBron James, I think. Both of which were also seemingly impossible to take. As he told JJ Redick after the game, I can't make a regular one. No, he really can't. But those two, circus threes went in.
Starting point is 00:05:19 LeBron James was really sort of your offensive headliner in terms of what people will be talking about on Wednesday. 30 points, 10 of 19 from the floor, 3 of 5 from 3. 3.5 from 3.0.7 from the free throw line. eight rebounds, eight assists, only one turnover, and LeBron kind of extending a run of clean basketball from Sunday when he had one or none? One.
Starting point is 00:05:44 One. So two turnovers against 18 assists in his last two games. That's good. And so, you know, the individual performances matter. DeAndre Aitin, Jared Vanderbilt. Everybody who played significant minutes aside for my guest, maybe Nick Smith, did something you can look at in this game and help the Lakers win. But the part that I, and fans might think this is too low a bar,
Starting point is 00:06:11 the reason the Lakers were able to overcome some very cold shooting in the first half, 3 of 17 from 3.7. From 3.0. Weren't even forcing shots. They're just missing a lot. And then a little bit of loose play is that aside, I thought, from about the first three minutes of the third quarter, two minutes, three minutes of third quarter when they came out a little flat from the break.
Starting point is 00:06:34 They were engaged in this game. They played hard. And as JJ pointed out, in his mind, he thought they played hard enough to be winning and going into the half, better shooting. They probably would have been. They kept themselves in this game by not ever really relaxing, by not assuming that they could come back and win. And that, I think, gave them the foundation for those individual performances.
Starting point is 00:07:02 And given what we've seen in terms of uneven performances from the Lakers over the last couple weeks, to see them come back with, you know, with two pretty good performances I thought against Memphis over the weekend. And then, you know, a solid victory on the road on Tuesday, driven in part by consistent engagement. That's a positive sign to me. I mean, it probably helped to some degree that A, Trey Murphy started this game really good. And in the third quarter in particular, he went nuts. So that's something that's going to keep them engaged. But also, they weren't playing well enough, I think, to ever relax.
Starting point is 00:07:46 They might have let go of the rope, I guess. It hasn't stopped them before. No, no. But what I'm saying is like there was nothing inherent to this game that would make, make them think they could relax. They maybe could decide either it ain't our night or maybe it could be our night, but we don't want to work hard enough to make it our night. We'll make it our night a different night this week.
Starting point is 00:08:11 Yeah, they've just had, you would agree they've had plenty of games, you know, certainly especially of late, where just the consistency of the, of the effort, of the engagements and the activity just wasn't high enough to really. compete. And I thought on Tuesday, absolutely was. Yeah, it's a point I've raised a lot over the course of the season. Like they are not, I remember I said this a couple weeks ago. I felt like they've often treated themselves. And it's been, to be clear, less of this over the last week, week and a half. They have often felt like a team that has treated themselves like they have accomplished more as a group than they actually have, whether they,
Starting point is 00:08:57 that is a byproduct of LeBron as the most been there done that player in the league, all of Luca's accomplishments getting off to the start that they did, not having necessarily the most urgent personalities at the top, whatever. But they've often felt to me like a group that has, like I said, I've said this before, almost like an entitlement in the way that I think they've treated themselves like a team that doesn't have to take the regular season seriously, even though the foundation isn't there. But over the last week and a half, two weeks, I think that's been less of a thing.
Starting point is 00:09:39 And for all of the controversy, I guess, about JJ's post-game comments after, what was it, the Spurs loss and the Rockets loss and, you know, the practice that everyone was going to be over-dose. We're not doing this for another 53 games. And, you know, JJ seemingly dialing back some of the comments and people thinking, JJ, you know, always chickens out, like blah, blah, blah. The truth is, it seems like however much yelling there was, was not, you know, calling people out was, was not. You know, it seems like there was honest conversation and everybody just recognized we can't keep doing this if we want to win games. We're not good enough yet to relax.
Starting point is 00:10:24 It's, you know, hopefully they keep it up. It's a long season. Every team, Oklahoma cities hit a bit of a, you know, they won 26 of 27 and had been a 500 team for two weeks. You know, like two and a half weeks. Every season has its sort of stretches of up and down play. And the Lakers, you know, they have the same vulnerabilities that they had two weeks ago. But they've just done a better job of staying engaged in ways that combat that. And while they're missing two really important players and some supporting guys as well,
Starting point is 00:11:00 they have kind of recovered a little bit from a standing standpoint. They're back to 23 and 11. They're third in the conference. And they've given themselves a little bit of wiggle room as they go into a tough game. Tonight, you mentioned as we were starting the show, this sort of building chemistry between LeBron and Luca. LeBron actually talked about that a little bit after the game. We'll get to it next. Locked on Lakers is brought to you by Fandul.
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Starting point is 00:13:39 will stay the same and we will appreciate it just the same. So that's it, every day a club. It is Luca, it was a struggle, the shooting, the outside shooting was a struggle for Luke. He was doing a lot of other really good stuff throughout the game. We could not get a three-pointer to go down. did not make a three in the first half.
Starting point is 00:14:02 We mentioned in the first, in the first segment, the two circus threes that he hit down the stretch, one which traveled through like 17 pairs of arms, bounced off like four people and eventually landed in Luca's arms. He makes the corner three there. Another one, you know, almost from like the bent, you know, the officials, you know, where they stand there. what's it called um but you know so that was you know he made the three there it is um it was crazy though to watch
Starting point is 00:14:39 not just that but the the passing luca made two of the craziest alley upes that i think i've seen uh one to lebron which was phenomenal and then the other one to uh deandre aton deandre aton which seemed impossible on the sidelines, double-teamed. It was just, we saw just how good he is with the ball. It was really fun. And it was just fun to watch his reaction to those crazy threes that went down when the Lakers needed those shots. They definitely needed those shots.
Starting point is 00:15:18 Luca and LeBron, because after the second one, the one along the sideline where the clock was, he was almost dealing with 24 second clock violation and lebron was both screening for him but also trying to not move even one inch further back because otherwise he would have pushed luka out of bounds like that's how a long sideline that he was and he just he was it was almost a half court sideline three with borderline no ability to jump certainly no ability to create a momentum. Like it was an unreal shot. And New Orleans called time out. Luca and LeBron were celebrating. LeBron was kind of doing this headbut into Lucas chest. And it felt emblematic of the,
Starting point is 00:16:09 there is a growing synergy between them on the court. It's something you and I have talked about after the last couple games versus Memphis. And it was also something that you and I have talked about, you know, a week or so ago in the opposite sense that Luca and LeBron really needed to get on the same page. And we were not saying we didn't think it could happen or that, you know, that Luca and LeBron were just these, these forces fighting against each other, not willing to cooperate, whatever. Like, we both said. It wasn't, it wasn't like that. It wasn't. No, we were just like, it needs to happen.
Starting point is 00:16:47 It wasn't. The issues have not been built out of, you know, one. guy's unwillingness to to, you know, the combination statistically just hasn't been great. It was interesting though after the game. You know, LeBron and LeBron was fantastic. So this was not just a game where LeBron put up numbers, but the aesthetics
Starting point is 00:17:08 of LeBron putting up the numbers looked much more like kind of LeBron of the past. And it was interesting. Like JJ talked about it after the game. It's like they, it's not a question of sort of preserving LeBron or this, but there is a question of measuring kind of getting a feel for where he is on any given night and understanding which nights, you know, what he's
Starting point is 00:17:35 capable of on any given night and responding based on what that might look like. Now, increasingly, he's doing more of what we saw on Tuesday. Like, he's clearly getting more comfortable, that long ramp up from a summer where he couldn't do it. normally does no training camp and stuff like that combined with the the age just takes longer to warm up when you're 41 you know he's rounding into form but there was that kind of acknowledgement that every night it's a little bit of a feeling out process just to see what's there with lebron and what was there on tuesday was really good yeah and even acknowledging how well lebron played to nine. He did play really well and he's had a string of a few really effective games for the
Starting point is 00:18:23 Lakers. The truth is, and this is something JJ talked about and I'll read his exact quote and comp, which I thought was a really interesting smart way of framing it. It's not something LeBron can do at will over four quarters anymore. It's just not it's not really, it's not physically possible for him on a game in, game out, 30 to 40 minutes being able to will it whenever. he wants. Yeah, what he's just, he's just, it's, it's not a criticism of LeBron. It's not trying to take away from anything. It's reality.
Starting point is 00:18:56 He's not, he's not supposed to be playing at this level anyway. But JJ compared it. He said like it's about recognizing on a game to game basis what LeBron has and then calculating on a game by game basis. How do we work with that? And he said, quote, he's like Greg Maddox, the pitcher, Hall of Fame pitcher at the end of his career. Every game he doesn't have his best stuff, but he has enough to win. And then JJ went on to say, I'm his catch. Oh, late career, Greg Maddox. Yeah, late career. Like Maddox with the Dodgers.
Starting point is 00:19:28 Yeah, yeah. It said, Greg Maddox at the end of his career. And he, he said, like, I'm his catcher, like the guy calling Greg Maddox LeBron's game. I've figured out how to call the pitches. Sometimes he tells me to F off and he calls his own pitch, which is fine too. But really to me, that's it. What's the best way to utilize him tonight based on the opponent, based on the coverage, based on how he's moving. He said, like, later, they'll have conversations during a game. Like, how's your three ball feeling? If LeBron says, feeling good, they'll run a play for that. And then JJ said, to me, quote, to me, what he's doing at 41, what he did last year at 40,
Starting point is 00:20:05 it's greatness. It's just a different form of greatness. And I think it's both an acknowledgement of what LeBron is doing right now, said this many times. It's unprecedented. There is no template for this, but something I've brought up a lot over the last few years, it requires management. It requires a lot of planning that's not typical for superstar or star level players, which can, I think, be done or certainly you can do that type of planning. I don't know if you can always count on it working, you know, between now and the end of the season and the playoffs. I think there may be times where LeBron's body just doesn't cooperate.
Starting point is 00:20:48 But if you can get, if you can get more like this over the course of the next, however many games, 34, the next 48 games, if the ratio is like 70 to 30 being able to sum this up, it'll be good. It'll work. Right. And also, there's, two things. It's also, you know, eventually Austin will come back. That changes the, the, the, the, the workload and the, the demands. But it's also what's the, the, the, what's the variance between the, the big, the good, good LeBron game in air quotes and the bad LeBron game in air quotes. Like, what is the difference between those. And if the swing isn't, you know, let's say what we saw Tuesday is pretty close to like kind of the top end. Like, I think, you know, we're, we're past the point where like 30 a night. from LeBron is something that you would want to try to do. So on a night where he puts up the numbers that he did Tuesday, where he gets that 30 points, is the floor, the typical floor,
Starting point is 00:22:01 kind of one of those 17 or 18 point games, you know, 19 points, 20, where it's a little inefficient, maybe not the same kind of pop isn't getting the lane, or is it like a couple of those games where he saw earlier, in his return to play where it was like 12, 13, and you just, you could tell that he wasn't capable. If that band narrows and it's currently narrowing pretty significantly,
Starting point is 00:22:29 then I really think it's something the Lakers can very easily work with. This is why, and we'll talk about this next, the synergy between Luca and LeBron matters, not just because they're the two best players on this team and how your two best players play off each other, always matters no matter who the two players are. But there's a ripple effect that happens when they are more synergized like we're seeing now that I think affects the entire team in ways that will not just help the Lakers,
Starting point is 00:23:00 but help LeBron. So we can talk about that coming up next. Locked on Lakers is brought to you by rocket money. Let's be real. Managing your finances, it can feel overwhelming between subscriptions that you forgot. You even signed up for. bills that keep going up, trying to figure out where your money actually goes each month, it feels easy to, you're losing control. It's just, it's overwhelming. And who's got time
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Starting point is 00:25:39 what do we have from LeBron? How do we want to use him? What do we do is the schedule? And I didn't, JJ, at least in the portion that was played on TV, wasn't asked about LeBron's availability for Wednesday. But throughout the course of the season, there will be times when you might see LeBron blow up on the front night of a back-to-back knowing that he's probably not going to play
Starting point is 00:26:03 on the back end of it. And so, you know, it wouldn't shock me if he sat, But either way, whether it's Wednesday night against San Antonio or a different back-to-back set later in the season, it's all, it's just, like you say, requires some careful planning. For that matter, by the way, it has not been clarified whether Victor Remignamo, the Spurs, he lost on Tuesday. Right. They, it has not been clarified to the, but I did a little bit of looking around. I have not seen anything definitively one way or the other that when they, will play in the second end of what will be a back-to-back for the spurs against the Lakers.
Starting point is 00:26:46 They had hoped to play him if he comes through Tuesday's game healthy enough, but either way, he's on a minute's limit and is coming off the bench. And if the NBA doesn't want star players missing these important nationally televised games, I believe this is a prime game. Maybe they shouldn't schedule the both teams on the second night of the back to back. Well, ironically, based on what we saw the last time the Lakers played the Spurs, obviously the Spurs are a better team with Victor Wemann Yama. That's not debatable.
Starting point is 00:27:21 They may, however, be a more difficult matchup specifically for the Lakers without Wemann Yama, because when they don't have Wembe, it forces them to go. They're just, they're all young athletic wings. They're all guards and wings going 100 miles an hour, all, gas, no breaks. Right. And it's a little like what the Lakers saw against the Pelicans, except with better players. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:27:47 So it, you could make an argument that it's better for the Lakers if Wembe actually plays. And I'm not kidding. No. So I just want to acknowledge a couple other stat lines for the, the Lakers. I mentioned, you just because I had said, like, everybody did something to, to contribute to this win on. Tuesday. DeAndre 8 was 9 of 16 from Florida at 11 rebounds, 18 points, two block shots. Jake LaRavia had a huge offensive rebound late with a good putback. Even though he could not buy a bucket for most of this game was very active throughout. It didn't hurt his level of
Starting point is 00:28:29 engagement, his level of play. Jared Vanderbilt was very strong off the bench, seven points, eight rebounds, four assists. He had a couple steals. I, I, I, I, I, you know, My only worry about Vandy is, Vando is he seems to be losing a little bit of confidence with pulling the trigger on his outside shot. But overall, he played a really strong game. So just, again, everybody who, everybody found, even Dalton Connect took a late charge, hit a couple threes. The same Dalton Connect that you and I thought would never see daylight again, did in fact get 10 minutes of this game. Had Gabe Vincent actually been available, I think he might not have actually played again. Right. Again, you don't want to play six guys, but he did play and he managed to make a couple good plays, although there were a couple bad ones in there too.
Starting point is 00:29:20 I am in the spirit of fairness, you know, you have to point out that he had those couple threes and that charge he took was in the fourth quarter was a big play for the Lakers. According to Marcus Martin, I don't know if Marcus is correct, but he, I guess, had heard it was the first. charge Dalton's taken in his career. I believe that. I believe it too, but that was a big one. It was something actually JJ talked about the charges in the fourth quarter that both Dalton and Luca, who it's flown under the radar, Luca is top 10 in the league for charges taken. Oh yeah, that's kind of his jam. But it's one way that he actually looks to make a positive effect defensively. And the charge that he took actually was either, I don't remember, he was either after a miss or a turnover that he had. But he ended up, you know,
Starting point is 00:30:15 saving the possession for the Lakers by, I mean, he took one mother of a charge. It was a big, big impact. But it's interesting when we're talking about the Aiton's contributions. And he really, I thought on both ends of the floor had a really good game. the game open for the Lakers. The two first baskets came off. Aitin actually setting up LeBron after he had gotten a feed inside from Luca. LeBron cuts baseline from the corner.
Starting point is 00:30:50 And Aiton, who actually had some... Yeah, pass ball nicely. Set up LeBron at the rim on this dump off. And then the next basket, LeBron set up Aiton at the rim. So the first two baskets came with those two setting up each other. And, you know, JJ talked after the game about how LeBron and Luca are forming this synergy, and that's been really fun to watch. But Aitin, after the game, also talked about how all the supporting players need to trust themselves
Starting point is 00:31:20 with their own actions and moving with intentionality and purpose. Because as he said, if we don't trust ourselves, the other guys aren't, you know, LeBron and Luca, they're not going to trust as if we're not trusting ourselves. and that idea of trusting yourself to move with purpose, to move with intentionality, to expect the ball. I think that sense of intentionality also grows the more you see Luca and LeBron playing off each other, because the more they're playing off each other, the more it feels like an actual offense is being run. And the more it feels like an actual offense is being run, the more these other guys are going to feel like they're going to be involved,
Starting point is 00:32:03 and therefore they're going to be moving more with purpose and intentionality. And there's a cyclical effect to all of this. LeBron talked about a couple things. He talked about somebody must ask him just about like, you know, Luca kind of bending his game and to, you know, to fit with him and fit with the rest of the team. And, you know, LeBron pointed out like, you know, this is we don't, Luca doesn't bend to us. We bend to him.
Starting point is 00:32:33 And he said, quote, we're just trying to be dynamic and work off of him. He's an unbelievable pick and roll player, unbelievable shotmaker commands the defense, four eyes, sometimes six eyes on him. So it's up to us to put ourselves in the right position. We talked about how it's that kind of thing is not necessarily hard for him, but it changes kind of changes what everybody's doing. And, you know, people have been used to doing this with LeBron. Now they're doing it with Luca.
Starting point is 00:32:55 to that chemistry issue, LeBron said this after the game, and I'm pulling this from Daniel Stark and of Lakers Nation. One thing that I was hoping to get was like a full summer of me being able to train, and then me, Luca and AR are trying to get a full training camp, full preseason. Not saying we're going to play every game, but we could lock in and kind of go off of where we finished last year because of my injury, we weren't able to get that. So it kind of put us behind the eight ball.
Starting point is 00:33:21 And now I'm starting to make my way back and AR is out. It happens, but we're just trying to wait. either the storm with the guys we have. Everybody's stepping up in his absence, but it's got to start with me and Luca every time we hit the floor. He has it in his hands. I'm going to have it in my hands. We have to make sure we're putting guys in positions offensively
Starting point is 00:33:39 and then defensively. And I think that the acknowledgement of how this works, first of all that it's we all bend to Luca. Saying it out loud is, I mean, I think it's something we all knew. It's something that they've been playing that way. but it's important for LeBron to say it just because it quiets. Not because LeBron's been resisting it.
Starting point is 00:34:02 No, because it quiets the conversation down. It helps bring clarity to the situation and make sure it says publicly that everybody here is on the same page, doing the same stuff. And then this idea of when we function like this, we're setting guys up offensively, and defensively. Like when the Lakers run good possessions, when they move the ball, when they cut, when they finish the basket,
Starting point is 00:34:33 when they dunk to finish a possession and stuff like that, they're able to go back and get set. New Orleans made their runs mostly running in this game. Lakers make a mistake. They get a bad shot. New Orleans pushing pace. Like most of the time.
Starting point is 00:34:48 Right. But when the Lakers can set their defense, they generally speak and get a pretty good job. defending the the pelicans in this game, then no one scored 17 points in the fourth quarter. So, I mean, that's pretty good. It's just good to say, like LeBron playing better is going to make a difference.
Starting point is 00:35:12 He can do more stuff. He can do it with more confidence. And I think can get in, really lean into, he talked about four eyes, six eyes on Luca. That's not enough eyes. left for LeBron. And so, you know, we saw it on that Allie Upe. If he's playing well and playing with confidence, LeBron, as much as anybody can leverage what Luca does for his own benefit. Absolutely. Again, the more the two of them get themselves on the same page and develop that
Starting point is 00:35:45 type of synergy, so much else I think falls into place. And, you know, we've talked about this a lot over the course of the season, you know, particularly when it was Luca, LeBron, and Austin, it often felt like three offensive, very separate islands. And that just, it doesn't work in terms of creating, I think, really good offense. But also, too, the byproduct is the other guys feel uninvolved. They don't have a real sense of when they're going to get the ball. I think sometimes we'll feel like if I get the ball,
Starting point is 00:36:17 I better put it up because I may not get another shot. and that can often lead to to worse shots you're putting up. All of these things need to be in concert with each other. And the last few games, we've seen more of that. It hasn't always been perfect,
Starting point is 00:36:32 but we've seen more of the right direction. We'll see what it looks like Wednesday night against the Spurs in Sacramento, obviously second night of a back-to-back. We're not quite sure who's going to be in the lineup for the Lakers, but it was a really big victory to get the front end for the Lakers.
Starting point is 00:36:49 tough game Wednesday and then maybe some winnable games when they come back to Los Angeles at the end of the week. Lockdown Lakers on YouTube is bringing to hang out with over 37,000 subscribers get us on Apple, get us on Spotify. We'll see you after the game.

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