5 THINGS

The Lakers won a crucial game last night as we come to the home stretch of the regular season. Sure, LeBron, Murray and The Joker all sat but Luka and Reaves continue to develop the more important chemistry (assuming Reaves is part of future team plans) and we clinched the tie-breaker over Denver for home court advantage in the playoffs. All of this is important for a team that, despite a disastrous road trip last week, is still surging in the standings.

1. Luka on fire early. Dude couldn’t miss. He’s gotten his legs under him and is moving more fluidly this week, which bodes well for the team and his efficiency. Still had a few too many turnovers, and that’s as much an adjustment of the Nuggets defense throwing different schemes and long dudes at him, but a lot of those plays won’t (or at least really shouldn’t) be attempted in the playoffs. I get what Dallas fans had to say about his complaining, while maybe not quite as bad as Devin Booker or Jayson Tatum, it is frequent and constant. Let coach do the complaining dude, and besides, you get to the line an awful lot as it is.
2. Winning when you should. In sport the hardest wins are against what are looked at as soft or depleted teams. This ignores a little something called pride. pro athletes compete man, it’s how they’re wired.
3. Nuggets chirping. Gott love Watson getting all chirpy and in Luka’s face. Dude dropped 21 on his team and he’s acting like the game was close and he was about to in it with his next hoop. Love that fight and grit, maybe just focus a little more on your defensive assignment, though lol.
4. Hayes continues to shine. I’m just as pleased as pie with how Jax has been playing of late. I have been pulling for the dude since last season, and I’m sure we’ll see 213 trade pitches dropped with an eye to replace him, but I’m down with rolling with Hayes into next season on a fair extension. If he has a breakout playoffs…that extension price may climb past what the Lakers a re comfortable with, however…
5. Bronny! Didn’t finish this until Friday morning so might as well tack on how great Mr. Bronny James played last night. When really nobody else showed up in a Milwaukee route, Bronny showed that he could have a brighter future than just about anyone who writes about sport predicted. I’ve said it before, but I think it bears repeating, the dude was and is a project. Everyone picked at 55 is a project, just how it goes. To his credit it sounds, and looks, like he’s been putting in the right work and the results are paying off. His first step is legit, he can blow by bigger defenders (and should have drawn a foul on Giannis that went uncalled). This wasn’t 48 minutes of garbage time, the lakers and Milwaukee had a vested interest in the outcome. Bronny’s stat line was full of career highs: 17 points, 5 assists, 3 rebounds and 30 minutes played. Solid job, keep working and ignore the BS.

It’s not always 12 point cruises and bench warmers playing the last few minutes, sometimes you gotta win nasty. The Lakers showed that nasty tenacity last night in a thrilling 113-109 OT vs. the Knicks. File this one under “Ain’t Pretty” because this was an ugly game start to finish. More like a street brawl than a basketball game at times, you could tell the Knicks wanted this game and they let it slip away (a habit for them to deal with). Lot of bright points in the murk and muck so let’s dig in.

1. Reaves Rusty Return. It was great seeing Reaves back on the floor but he struggled mightily from the field. Still, it’s worth noting how he helps bend the defense when he plays with LBJ and LD. This aspect of the Lakers, three guys who can get to the rim and create in addition to hitting the three, is what will differentiate the Lakers from the rest of the Association. The Warriors are the only other team that comes close with Curry, Butler and Green and Curry is the one with the least court vision in that trio (like Reaves on ours). Other teams feature a possibly more elite shot creator (Denver has Jokic, OKC has SGA) but the multi-headed Hydra that is the Lakers is a tough foe to vanquish, even when one of them is missing shots they normally make. That three he hit in OT was as clutch as it gets.
2. Gotta keep Jaxson Hayes. There might not be a better center within our means this summer. I’m sure we’ll see 8,231,609 articles about Myles Turner, Brook Lopez and Clint Capella. From my point of view there might not be a better fit for Luka than what we already have in-house. Should he decline his player option for next season Naz Reed is certainly going to vault to the top of the list but his services, like Turner’s, are likely to come at a price too steep. We don’t have $30 million to toss at the 5 position. If we can’t work a trade for Kleber we won’t even have $10 million we can throw at the 5, not for a player on another team. We can sign Hayes, possibly for the Bi-Annual Exception. His fit is apparent and he’s blossoming into a solid player before our eyes. We’ve made the mistake of chasing names over impact and fit too many times in the past, here’s hoping we’ve learned from those lessons. Hayes played so well the Lakers couldn’t afford to go small down the stretch and that’s saying something.
3. Knecht. That buzzer-beater he hit at the end of the 3rd reminded me of an earlier game this season (don’t recall which one, like in the first 10 games…) and it was great to see a young player who has faced a lot of adversity already find the space and ability within to take and make a game-altering shot. He’s been looking more like his early season self and I couldn’t be happier that we didn’t trade him for a broken down center we never needed in the first place. No offense to Mark Williams intended, just his fit given that we already have Hayes was curious to me from the get-go.
4. L & L inc. I’m just now getting used to seeing LeBron and Luka on the same team. It’s been a blast and they kept us afloat through 3 quarters. Credit them for rowing the boat but also for trusting their team down the stretch when one could easily imagine them thinking “it has to be me”. That kind of thinking isolates and divides a team, they’re embracing theirs and the results show up in the in/loss column.
5. Great test coming up. We’re going to start facing teams that have a different set of players than what we’ve been beating up on. We’ve feasted, as any good team does, on an easier portion of the schedule and now we go back on the road. So here’s hoping the Lakers continue to commit and execute on D, keep trusting one another and keep playing hard. It’s the only true cheat code in sport, after all.

50,000 points and counting. An astounding feat given that LeBron came into the league without much of a jump shot. As the years have gone by, James has added and added and arsenal of moves and redefined our preconceived notions of what age in sport means. It’s been a lot of fun to watch, too. The crazy thing is, Lebron wasn’t the only Laker to make history last night. Let’s get into it.

1. Lebron and 50,000 points. this isn’t the only Club of One LeBron has created, he’s also the exclusive member of the 40K/10K/10K Club for total points, assists and rebounds in the regular season. Coach Reddick had an astute observation that we would have celebrated this a little earlier had the NBA Cup tournament game counted as playoff points last season. All in all, I’ve run out of hyperbolic things to say about LeBron James. So I’ll leave it at this: I’ve watched Kareem, Magic, Kobe, Shaq and Gasol all excel as Lakers and make one kind of history or another. I watched Jordan in the 90s, all 3 versions. I’ve never seen anything like what LeBron is doing. MVP almost doesn’t stack up as enough of an award, the NBA needs to consider some kind of lifetime achievement award to properly recognize what we’re all watching.
2. Luka joined Lakers history last night, too. He joined the exclusive 30/15 club (points and assists) which has 3 other members: Jerry West, Magic Johnson and LeBron James. I suspect that we’ll se Luka making a lot of purple and gold history himself. FWIW Magic posted that line 19 total times. Amazing.
3. Positive Vibes. The trio of Luka (+37), Shake Milton (+30) and Jarred Vanderbilt (+27) managed to post an absurd +94 combined plus/minus rating. That group scored and defended at an extremely high level and helped put the game out of reach. Shake is an interesting dude, his jump shot is ugly as sin, he doesn’t have a great handle but he’s tough and plays hard. Vando seems like he defends two guys at once sometimes, it’s awesome to watch, There a issues with his game in terms of scoring but you can’t deny that watching him play defense is an absolute blast. Also, he’s been taking and making multiple threes from the corner in the last few games. That’s all we need from him, he’ll score plenty on back cuts, put-backs and breakaways.
4. Jaxson Hayes coulda/woulda/should had a new career high. His career high in points is 23 (as a Pelican), he matched his Laker high last night. He did all his scoring in the first half. I kinda felt for the dude because he plays so hard and so unselfishly every night, I wanted him to get to at least 20. Next time, Jax.
5. Lakers Analytical Dominance. AKA L.A.D. The L.A.D. is what’s separating them from the pack, we’re still dominating in paint points most nights but we’ve added the three ball and maintained a solid differential at the free throw line. This is what’s known as a recipe for success. Toss in an NBA leading defense and you can start to see why the mass media is starting to come around on our ability to win it all this season. not sure anyone could have predicted such a quick, seamless transition between 2 generational talents or that the defense would somehow find another level with AD on the Mavs…but there it is. impossible to ignore. Now if we could just cut down on the turnovers…

Great seeing Zion play, dude looks lean and mean which is bad news for the NBA…next season. He looks like he’s in the best shape of his life, good for him.