Purple Blood Lakers Podcast

The Lakers ended the season on a high note, in spite of injuries to Austin and Luka. The trade for Luke was Rob's finest stroke. Bronny looks ready, with some risks. Marcus IS ready. Rui may not be dat dude. All that matters for Jake and Vando is limiting KD. DA tends to come through in games against skilled centers. The King will lead us to the Promised Land.

The Lakers have gone on the most exciting win streak in the past several years. Donna who is always Wright wanted Marcus Smart to start and that changed everything. Bron has made adjustments to his game to fit in with Luka and Austin and the results have been devastating for our opponents. The Lakers look good!

The Lakers had their best game against a quality, hot opponent. Controlling the ball gives the Lakers a chance. Marcus is working out. What happened to Jake? Hillbilly Kobe is back. He and Rui are thriving in Bron's absence. But the Lakers have had a real sustained excellence run this season. Oh, and Luke really is that dude, and y'all need to get off of Ayton.

The Lakers had a boring January basketball stretch, getting enough key wins to maintain the 6th spot. Here we go for a playoff run. Nice to end the pre-all-star season with a tripple double from the old man.

We dropped 3 in a row. Again. But we were down several starters during a rough stretch and Lakers fans shouldn't panic. Donna doesn't panic. Ever. Sure enough, we came back with a masterful first half against the re-constituted Hawks. LeBron James deserves his flowers. He had a gigantic genius-level game, and has been on a tear.

First, we dropped a game to the Pistons, which we ignored in this podcast, because what more can be said about the Lakers' struggles against aggressive, athletic teams? Our trade target remains as specified. But we bounced back with a 3 game winning streak, 2 against the Grizzlies and one against the Pelicans. The Lakers formula against struggling teams appears to be keep it close, then dominate the 4th. Lebron looks fantastic. Luka remains Luka. Vando is stepping up. Jake looks like he should get a chance to start. And Ayton demanded the ball, got it, and did something with it. The Lakers are riding high, but let's see how we do against better teams.

Though we love the effort after the 3 game skid and not-so-uncomfortable practice, this is the Kings so we can't learn much about the team from this beat down. Lebron played nearly perfect ball, Nick is that dude, Vando helped us on D, and Luka actually played some nice D. Marcus Smart deserves mention too, nice game from him. We'll take the win, but this team still has a ways to go before we can say they are even an average defensive NBA team.

We beat the Jazz, but nobody cares. Then we went on our first 2 and then 3 game losing streak. Lakers nation is panicking. We have to do something. And none of the ideas (start Smart, Jake, or Vando) are sufficient to win us a ring this year, so the pressure is on to make a trade, but for one of these pieces we need, we cannot miss.

The Lakers suffered a loss to the Wemby-less Spurs, wasting the best game of Marcus Smart's Laker career thus far (8 threes!). They came back to barely beat the Dillon-Brooks-energized Suns, who engineered a 20 point comeback that the Lakers ultimately pushed back. The Laker bench won the game with an off night for Luka and Austin resting a strained calf. Vando played particularly well in his first playing time in a few games.

The Lakers lost to Boston. A travesty made worse by them shooting lights out. So as has become out tradition, we ignored Episode 22, and just moved on to Episode 23 in which we discuss the great game Lebron had, just how bad Embid and George are, and Rich Paul's comments on Lakers readiness.