Locked On Lakers - Daily Podcast On The Los Angeles Lakers - With No Luka Dončić (Among Others) the Lakers Lose Big in Portland, 132-116

Episode Date: January 18, 2026

Some games are borderline unwinnable, assuming the opponent shows up to play. Portland did, and without Luka Dončić, Deandre Ayton and Jaxson Hayes and (of course) Austin Reaves, the Lakers were simply down too much talent. The end result was predictable-- the available players put out a good effort, and ultimately it didn't matter. Final score, 132-116. The Lakers are now sliding dangerously close to play-in territory, and with a game Sunday against the Raptors could be in that section of the standings before the weekend is over. There were some individual performances worth praising, including Drew Timme (21 points), Maxi Kleber, Rui Hachimura (11 points in 19 minutes) and Marcus Smart (a team-leading 25), but the assignment was too tough. The Lakers will try to regroup ahead of Sunday's game, and there's at least a possibility the guys missing Saturday could (save Reaves) play Sunday, as they're all listed as day-to-day. On the other hand, LeBron could very well sit out after having just played both sides of the back to back.  HOSTS: Andy and Brian Kamenetzky  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/everydayerclub Support Us By Supporting Our Sponsors!Turbo TaxFor a limited time, you can have your taxes done by a local TurboTax expert for just $150 — all in, if a TurboTax expert didn’t file for you last year. Just file by February 28. Take taxes off your plate and get back to your life. Visit https://TurboTax.com/local to book your appointment today.  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 to https://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.

The Lakers are running out of bodies, and they're not winning many games. What can they do? What'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 Lockedars your first listen to every day, Monday through Friday, sometimes on Saturdays and Sundays, and even into weekends or holidays, no matter how you get the podcast,

Spotify, Apple, iTunes. Maybe you're one of the 37,000 plus subscribers to the Lockdown Liggers YouTube page. No matter how you get the show, you are helping make the Lockdown Podcast Network, the number one sports podcast network. And this or any other known universe, I'm Brian Komenetsky with Andy Kemenetsky, covered the team for a long time, nearly 20 years for the LA Times, ESPN for the Athletic and Andy. This was one of those games when I said to myself when I saw that DeAndre Aiton and Jackson Hayes

and Luca Donchich, who's their best player, we'll be joining Austin Reeves on the sidelines of this game. We had a sense that it might come, but we weren't totally sure. I said to myself, this is probably not good. And it turned out it wasn't. The Blazers win as predicted, I think by most people, 132, 116 team was a final score. Can't fault the effort.

Lakers just didn't have enough dudes to win this game, I don't think. No, it was the 20th new starting lineup of the season. Brian James. Four more, and they get a free latte. Oh, they're going to get it. They're going to get plenty. This is a team that by March is going to be caffeinated out of their eyeballs. LeBron James, Marcus, Mark, Gabe Vincent, Jake LaRavia and Maxie Cleaver, your starting five for this game.

And I got to say it began with the full maxi experience. He got to the line on a pick and roll feed from LeBron, two of two. that was, I believe, the Lakers first score. A couple trips later, he was set up for a little jumper. Then he later airballed a jumper. Then he hit a wide open three. Then he drove off an upfake at the line, used his offhand for a layup. Max was getting saucy there.

Yeah, he was. Like I said, it was the full Maxi experience. I also think in that opening three or four minutes, like seemingly everyone on the team, Maxie was already in foul trouble. the Lakers picked up a lot of fouls in this game. 22 files in the first quarter, which I believe they said was an NBA record. I don't think it was an NBA record.

It was the most free throws for any quarter this season. I know that for sure. It's a record, maybe not a record. Well, it's certainly a record for this season. It made the game feel like it was setting a record for length. I thought actually this game might have jeopardized the Lakers' ability to get back to L.A. in enough time on Sunday to play the Raptors because it was just taking forever. Some of this was the refs getting a little tickey-tacky.

Some of this was legitimately the Lakers unable to stop anybody, which led to a lot of penetration, a lot of following in the lane. When you're giving up that much of the pain, Oh, yeah. All these things. It does, it makes it hard for the refs to distinguish. I just, you know, look, I mean, you can go through the box. Portland earned, Portland earned a lot of those.

You mentioned, for sure. You mentioned, you know, the performance of Maxi Claibah in the starting lineup. You know, he had finished with 11 points in 20 minutes, which is, you know, for this season, for him, a pretty high output. And, you know, you look at Drew Timmy at 21 points, 9 and 12 shooting coming off the bench. and Kobe Buffkin, who were going to talk about a lot, I think, heading into next week, did a couple nice things, had a couple blocks, made three of his eight shots. You know, LeBron was fighting it, I think, hit a lot on his plate, but Marcus Smart had 25 points.

It's, JJ after the game, I mean, I know he's not happy with the outcomes here, and he's not happy with the defense. But it was interesting. I think this was not a winnable game against the Portland team that is actually over their last 12, 13 games played quite well, even without Deniaia. This is not really a winnable game. But what I do think is kind of you get revealing. And I wonder even, Andy, what you think about this. Like, have they missed too many people in too many spots with too, you know, to even do the thing where it feels like the team plays the same?

way when guys are missing. The flip side of that is Luca missing is different than everyone else missing. It would be one thing if they had had most of the team intact, but Austin Reeves had missed six weeks, which I think he's going to end up in total missing somewhere between six to eight weeks. But let's just say, right. Let's just say Austin missed six weeks, but the rest of the team mostly remained intact, like pretty steadily you know who's available. Obviously, missing Austin, as we've seen during his absence, is a problem. But if it's basically just Austin missing, you figure out ways to offset this and work around it and find, you attempt different approaches to solutions when again it is your 20th different starting lineup in now game 40 and not a

one of those starting lineups was j j reddick deciding you know what i want to go in a different direction i want to try something new all 20 have been dictated by who is and is not available it i know i've brought this up on more than a few you know more than one but certainly a few occasions throughout this season, my concerns that just the Lakers have not had enough of an opportunity to build really anything. They've really spent these opening 40 games other than the start, the start of the season, which by the way was the most consistent in terms of just who was available. They have spent most of this season, frankly, just trying to survive. And I think on balance, they have survived reasonably well, but they have they have not really built towards anything meaningful in a lot of ways.

And it's not really anybody's fault because this isn't controllable, but it's a problem. We're halfway through the season. And if you asked me, what's the best, what's the best version of this team? My answer would be, I have no fn idea. I don't know. I've barely seen them play together. It's, look, I mean, when Luca's around and playing, well, like, they have a fighting chance in most of the games that they play.

But it's just this, the way things are going, have definitely revealed what the weaknesses in the, in the roster are. I mean, there's no, there's, that, that's not a mystery. They weren't really a mystery going into the season. I was going to say, we told everyone what they were. You know, how things have played out, but like the way, and their capacity to mitigate some of those weaknesses by leaning into strengths has been tough. You know, Austin Reeves continues to make a lot of money during this stretch while he's out

because his importance has being emphasized in many significant ways. We'll see what happens. look, the Lakers come turn around like you mentioned. They take the floor again Sunday against Toronto. Also going to be a big challenge for them. The Raptors are a quality Eastern Conference team. And we're currently fourth in the east, 25 wins. And I don't know exactly what the Lakers can do here to really sort of stop this slide.

I mean, the effort was there. They don't have the personnel to defend, you know, especially when you're missing both of your centers and, you know, disrespect to Maxi Claibah. But when you're missing two of your three centers and, you know, your next guy after Claibah is Drew Timmy on a two-way deal. On a two-way deal who is, you know, hasn't been able to stay in the league because, you know, if you go back and look at his box scores with the nets, he's basically putting up like 19 and 13 every night. He's not in a league. He's can't defend. But the Lakers are creeping closer and closer to danger spots. They're currently tied with, you know, statistically tied essentially with Phoenix for the 6-7. And they're only a game and a half up on Golden State who have won 7 of 10 for the 8 spot.

And Portland is within spitting distance, given how things. are going with the leaguer so it's like this is just they got to figure out how to get through this staying afloat to keep themselves in in contention with the top six a lot of basketball left but you know they need to figure out how they're going to win some games and they are after tomorrow gone essentially from the crypto.com for the rest of the month yeah they play denver on tuesday I believe they have a game against the Clippers. Luca and... Clippers team, by the way, that's playing a whole lot better.

Absolutely. A lot of teams around the league are starting to pick it up, and they all happen to be the ones that the Lakers are playing. JJ said before the game that Luca's MRI for the groin issue that kept him out of this game, and it has been bothering him for, I would imagine, anywhere from a week to two weeks. It's been pretty clear.

And JJ said that the MRI came back good. Lucas listed as day-to-day. DeAndre Aiton, the knee-sortness that kept them out. He's also listed as day-to-day. I'm just laughing at the idea of like, I would want my MRI and my groin to come back good too. Yeah, for sure. Quite a groin you got there, my friend. I mean, they did say it was impressive.

They just said it looked good. I would want mine to come back impressive. I mean, I don't know. What a prodigious groin MRI he just had. Yeah, I mean, I don't know if Luca left the MRI place feeling even better about himself knowing you couldn't play. But that's another story for another day. MRI in your pocket, or you're just happy to see me? In any event, though, hopefully those guys will be here all night, folks.

Hopefully those guys are available all night. It felt like you'd be done with this set before the game ended. But hopefully those dudes are going to be available to play on Sunday. I mean, as far as figuring out weight, I mean, frankly, we don't know if LeBron's going to be able to play in this game Sunday. I mean, he just played a back-to-back, so hopefully it's possible. He was solid, not, you know, he was solid fine in this game. He started out very slow, picked it up in the second half. I believe he was three of 12 at one point.

before eventually picking it up, better second half, finished with 20 points, eight assists, nine rebounds, four turnovers, steel and two blocks. Like, he did some stuff that was good. Inefficient, but was up against it. I was going to say, the reason I bring up LeBron is not to be critical of the performance. It's he's the best player on the team right now. And A, we don't even know if he's going to be available to play on the second end of this back-to-back. B, it is a lot to ask of him at this stage of his career to put a team on his back.

Particularly this team, the roster that was left for him. Right. And this is unfortunately the place that the Lakers are in right now. That is the ask of LeBron. I would be lying if I said I felt confident about him able to do it. I'd love to be pleasantly surprised. But again, it's just a lot. Figuring out how to get through this is just going to be really difficult.

I'm not even sure there's a form here. On the plus side, I will say this before we go. On the plus side, a lot of the role players in this game stepped up with opportunity. We mentioned Maxi. We mentioned Marcus Smart with 25 points, hit four threes, nine to 17 from the field. Drew Timmy's night. Rui, this was the best Rui's look since coming back from the calf injury himself, 11 points, 4 of 7 from the field, two steals, a really good assist setting up.

I want to say maxi for three. He's still on the minutes restriction, but he played 19 as opposed to 18. Creeping up. No, but I'm being serious. Like where they are right now, every minute Rui can play matters. Like it actually does matter. And I saw some things from Kobe Buffkin. that I liked and if nothing else should make Gabe Vincent very territorial about his minutes.

Yeah. So we'll be back. Obviously, after Sunday's game, we'll have a full show for Monday. And yeah, see what goes. But before we go, Andy, we have to tell people about this. Well, that Locked on Lakers is brought to you by Fandul. There we go. Fridays are, they feel different during basketball season.

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