 What's the word y'all? Alright, it's finally time for me to do a Lakers centric video. I've been very transparent on this channel why I don't make Lakers videos with the height of chaos that's going on. And it's mostly because it's a big market team with three future Hall of Famers. So I know that you're gonna get your Lakers fix. You turn on ESPN, they're gonna be talking about Lakers. Other YouTube channels across this platform, they're gonna be talking about the Lakers. And I would rather highlight the Utah Jazz, even if the Jazz video don't do as good as the Laker one. But with some of the recent news coming out, I think it's time for me to finally sit down and talk exclusively Lakers. Of course, I'm not breaking any news here because they 2-9, but this season has been disastrous. I think the majority of NBA fans saw this Laker roster and immediately thought they weren't gonna be a contender. I gave them the benefit of the doubt of having LeBron and Anthony Davis and say hey, they about to be a playing team at the least, they're 2-9. They have the worst offense of all LeBasketball. They still have the worst 3-point shooting in all LeBasketball. When the two-star players LeBron and Anthony Davis are on the court together, they are negative. And if I'm looking at offensive rating and comparing it to the last 20 Lakers roster, this one narrowly beats out one roster. And that was the 2015-2016 Lakers, the last year of Kobe's career, the 17 and 65 Lakers. This team is slightly better on the offensive side than that one. Obviously not great. And I remember through the first couple of weeks of basketball, we were like, okay, the shots aren't falling, they might have the worst offense almost of all time, but at least the defense is looking good, right? When now the defense is slightly lower than league average, they're 18th in the league. So boy, oh boy, now what do we hang our hats on? What is going on in Laker Nation that is a positive? Well, Russell Westbrook is playing better. That's literally it. That's all. And out of all of the things I just said there, I think the most surprising of it all is that when LeBron and Anthony Davis on the court together, technically they're a net negative. And I was looking at other teams that have all-star duos. And there's only two other ones that are even in the conversation of being a net negative. Unfortunately, it is my Bulls, Levine and DeMar deRosen. That sucks. And then Kyrie and KD. It's not great company to be in, especially when you have no real future when it comes to draft capital. And let's be honest, LeBron James doesn't look as great as he has in previous seasons. And this is where we start to get real and try to have as little heart to heart as NBA fans for the entirety of me being a conscious NBA fan. LeBron James has been the best player in the league. He's been number two. He's been no lower than number three. And for the first time in my life as an NBA fan, I'm watching LeBron James play and being like, damn, he not, he not up there anymore. And him not being up there anymore is literally just talking about him being in the top three, top five players in the league. I don't, I don't think he's there anymore. The eye test says it. And so does the numbers. This is the least efficient season of his career other than his rookie season. I think people have to remember when I'm talking about these things. He's, he's going on 38 years old. So, so obviously he's not going to look the same as when he was 30, but just comparing it to last season where he did average 30 and almost let the league if he didn't get injured a bunch. Last year, he was a good transition player. Very good as a pick and roll ball handler in isolation in the post-ups. This year, when it comes to pick and roll, he is considered a below average. Not below average compared to LeBron, but below average compared to the other players in the league. He's been very poor on post-ups and he's been average on spot ups. The good thing is in isolation, he's still one of the top dogs in the NBA. So that is, that is a good thing. Last year, he was amazing on cuts and he's still amazing on cuts, but the frequency of these cuts have gone down, gone down dramatically. So he just hasn't been the same LeBron. These are still also numbers. These are still potentially all NBA numbers, but he's been LeBron. Ain't no secret. He's been injured for the last couple of years, something we've never seen. And just like I mentioned earlier, he's injured right now, day to day, but still dealing with injuries. So how the hell does Rob Palinka slash the LA Lakers figure out a way to get back into contention? Because this team is not like the Chicago Bulls. This team is not like the Toronto Raptors. This team, and that's it. This team's sole purpose for every single season is to win a championship. We have an aging superstar player, no draft capital, no people in the back that like, I'll give them two more years, you're going to be that star player. This team has one goal and that is to be in legitimate contention in their 2-9. What the hell can they do to get to the point where they're back to being looked at as a team that can win it all? And low key, we kind of been thinking this or trying to figure this out for the last couple of seasons. Is it trading for Miles Turner and Buddy Tio's spoiler alert? Probably not. And then over the last couple of days, I think it started with Bill Simmons on his podcast. He was saying that, hey, the Lakers in their front office are maybe taking calls on Anthony Davis. Now they completely shut that down yesterday, but it got Twitter talking. Is trading Anthony Davis the only way the Lakers can recuperate and either start fresh or figure out a way to build another roster around LeBron that could get them back into a championship. Anthony Davis so far this season is averaging 23 points per game, 10 rebounds to assist. The defense has been pretty damn good, at least for the first portion. A lot of people had him as a defense player to your candidate, considering the Lakers were really good on that side of the ball and he was the anchor behind that. But with that said, this hasn't been the Anthony Davis that a lot of people expected. I keep having to remind people how good Anthony Davis was in that first year with the Lakers in the previous years before that. I mean, he was 29 years old and the NBA and his peers decided that Anthony Davis was one of the 75 greatest players to pick up a basketball. And right now he is all star good, maybe end of all NBA good, but that wasn't the ceiling you wanted when you traded Brandon Ingram. You traded Josh Hart, all of the picks and all of the picks swaps. People thought that they were going to give Anthony Davis the keys once LeBron got to around this age and everything was going to be fine because Anthony Davis was legitimately giving you 26-10 and elite, and I mean elite level defense. And it hasn't been that. And even he knows that. He went to a post game interview. He was like, man, when LeBron is on the court, I'm the artist with you. I don't play as hard or try to look for my own shot as much. That's not what they traded all that stuff for. You know what I'm saying? They wanted you to eventually take over. It was like two seasons ago where they were saying, look, Anthony, this is your team. And he hasn't taken that and really done anything with it. And if we're being real, a lot of that's because he struggles to stay on the floor. He played only 40 games last season, 36 before that. And in his first year in LA, he played 62 games, which is pretty good, especially when it was only a 71 game season because we had the whole league shutting down. That was his one year in LA and they went on to win a championship. He was all NBA. He was defensive first team. Like that was the best version of Anthony Davis we got. He was healthy and he was looking like the prime version of himself. But we can see I was in I was in attendance for the second game, first and second game of the season for the Lakers. And against the Clippers, he hurt his back. And to this day, that back is still hurting them, but he's trying to fight through it. He's trying to play through it. And he just doesn't look as good as he did then. And then we get to the Russell Westreau piece where he was starting with the Lakers at the start of the season and it wasn't looking good. And eventually they convinced him to come off the bench and he's had some of the best basketball in his Lakers jersey once they brought him off the bench. And I guess teams are now calling like, oh, okay, we'll take on Russell Westbrook if we're going to get this version, which is interesting. But the the Lakers in their front office, Roppelinger got that extension based on the fact that they won the championship in 2020. But basically, everything after that has been weak decision after weak decision. And the most recent thing is so goddamn mind boggling to me that like, I cannot believe this man slash some GMs across the league has not learned their lesson. The Lakers are known to covet Bradley Beale. And this is from Chris Haynes. I cannot believe that this is real. And one thing about Chris Hayes, shout out to him. I think he just got hired to be a part of Bleach Report. So technically we family now we co workers now is that when it comes to the Lakers slash LeBron James slash clutch clients, he know what the hell he talking about. So if the Lakers are known to covet Bradley Beale, that is a legitimate report. Now Bradley Beale would have to request a trade because he just signed a huge as extension with a no trade clause. But the fact that this is a thing is blowing my mind because we've been here, y'all. We've traded for the third star. And what the hell has that done? You know what happened when you built a legitimate roster around AD and LeBron? You won a goddamn championship. You legitimately raise the Larry O'Brien when it was them two plus legit great role players. Some of those dudes went on to get big ass bags in different places. But now you back it to the point we're trying to trade for all star level player and the big three plus minimums doesn't work in basketball. You want to know why it doesn't work in basketball? Because if you don't have a big three specifically around LeBron James, what do you need? Shooters. And you know what's a high commodity shooting. Duncan Robinson got 90 meal based on one year of elite level shooting. Like shooting is the most important thing in basketball. You're not going to get shooters on minimums. And guess who knows that? The goddamn Lakers. Look at the roster right now. They built that roster with nothing but minimum contracts. And it's like, Trey Brown, Julie's been really good for y'all. But like that is the type of shooting we're getting. And you're not getting great level shooting, especially listen, especially with the last couple of years of Lakers basketball. I know it's LA. I know it's an historic franchise and everything, but like, I think we passed the point of people taking big ass pay cuts to play with the Lakers because it ain't like y'all this close to putting it together. Y'all are two and nine right now. And Bradley Beal's contract is disgusting. He just is. Shout out to Bradley. He did what exactly what me, you and everybody else watching this video would do. If that much money was put in front of us, hell yeah, I'm signing that paper, even if I might not be as good to fill the shoes of that paper. I'm signing it. Are you kidding me? So he's 29 years old now. He's making $43 million. And by the time he's 33, he's going to have a player option here. It's $57 million a year, 53 to a year before that. And listen, Bradley Beal is really good. He's an all-cycle player. He has been for the last couple of seasons. He even led the league in scoring a few times, right? But that's not, if you compare him to the other people that we are considered shooting guards in the NBA, is he better than Devin Booker? Is he better than Donovan Mitchell? At this point in his career, probably not. So you're going to be paying this man 53-ish million dollars to maybe be the third best shooting guard at basketball? Because spoiler alert, there are some people maybe behind him, if you got him at number three, that's damn close to taking number three. So it's just like it doesn't solve any problem whatsoever. The problem is the shooting. Bradley Beal can score, but he's not a shooter. You don't want to pay that much money. Personally, I am not qualified for the job of NBA general manager, but I love the idea of using the off-the-books Russell Westbrook contract in that space that's going to be generated and sign a few really good role players. And maybe that don't even get you back into contention, but damn it, it gets you back in playoffs. You know what I'm saying? And that's the thing about the Lakers, and that's why I don't know what I'm telling this video, but it is so hard to figure out what the heck they do, because I don't think any of these two options are going to get you back to the place where you want to be. The one thing I can say about the Lakers that's making it easier for them is by all accounts, there's going to be a lot of teams that are going to want to buy them out, even though a lot of teams have started off really good and everybody's super competitive at the start of the season. Vic, Scoot, the Thompson twins, Nick Smith, all of these dudes, people are really, really high on. So there's a report that came out yesterday that once we get towards the trade deadline, you're going to see a lot of teams going 10-game loser streaks, 15-game loser streaks, potentially a 20-game loser streak, and you know what the Lakers can do? Come on, I'll take that person on. I'll take that person on, because it's a quality NBA player, you want to buy them out. So this might be the perfect time to be buyers, but what is there to be bought, especially if Rob Lincoln them are thinking about two-max spots? Two-max spots? Or potentially Bradley? Like, come on, man. And I think the Wizards should decide to move on from Bradley, should decide to bottom out and go out there and try to get one of those top dudes. And if they're offering Russ and those two picks, then maybe that's good enough. But by this account by Chris Hayes, they don't really look at those two picks as something that they want to trade because they realize the direction of the organization. And it takes, I don't know, some special organization to teeter the line of wanting to be able to win now versus thinking about picks that are valuable in 2027. And I don't think the Lakers have built that cohesiveness to care about both things or be able to care about both things. So I don't know what the hell happens with the Lakers or how they can do what they want to do. Reality situation is, we're seeing some of the last years of LeBron's career and he won't even be in contention for it. Some sad shit, man. It's really sad because we have seen LeBron throughout the great majority of his career. If he is on the roster, they got a chance. If he's in Easter Conference, they make it to the Easter Conference finals at the bare minimum. But like, I can't say this is a failure because in 2020, they legitimately won a championship. And winning the championship is something that a lot of organizations ain't been able to do in the entirety of their organization's history. But post 2020 championship, it seems like bad decision after bad decision after bad decision. Oh, Rob Blinker, here's an extension. I'm counting that bad decision. And I continue to look at or think about the fact that LeBron James signed an extension. I think it's only a one year extension or whatever. But I thought that in order to get LeBron, to convince LeBron to stay here slash, you know, make a decision before hitting free agency, you had to convince him that you were going to do everything in your power, everything in your power to keep this team in contention. And so far, you haven't done a goddamn thing. Y'all know me. I've been a guy that's been pro player empowerment for the entirety of this channel. But I think it has to be tuned down just a little bit. And I hope that the Lakers lack of success in these last two seasons, or the Brooklyn Nets lack of success over the last couple of seasons is showcasing around the league to the owners that like, we're okay. We're giving player empowerment, but to a certain level, you know what I'm saying? I'm not giving Katie and Kyrie the keys to my organization. I'm not necessarily asking LeBron if he thinks that Russell Westerner could be a good fit because a lot of people saw that trade happen and immediately thought it was going to be bad. You know what I'm saying? I'm sure those players should, they should have a say in these type of things, but I can't have these dudes dictate the entire future because that's what I'm getting paid for. Let me make those decisions. You're like, LeBron, what you think? You, I'm a little, if you're about it. All right, let's test it anyway and see what happens. Now we sit back and watch the Lakers play against the Sacramento Kings tonight and the Kings are the favorite. The Kings are favorite to win today's game. Again, LeBron is not playing, but that's just showcasing how bad it is. They started the lineup the other night though. I think it was Winnie and Gabriel, Troy Brown Jr., Austin Reeves, Kendrick Nunn, and Anthony Davis. If that's your best five, your first five, you don't have a great chance of winning a bunch of games, especially when we're not getting Pales' version of AD. Pales' version of AD, you put on a little backpack and get you X amount of, no, you ain't got that. You ain't got that. I think was probably best for not only Anthony Davis' career, but for the future of the Lakers is to get him a legitimate big. I know me included have been preaching, AD should just play the five. I think we've seen that AD at the five is probably not best for his own physical health. And I think he know that, know that. And that's why he's been saying to the world, hey, put me at the four. But I think the team probably works better with Anthony Davis at the four. I would be okay with Anthony Davis going back to the physique of 27-year-old AD. I don't know if that's possible, but you know what I'm saying? Letting him play the four with a legitimate big next to him. Also finding real point guard play. I know LeBron has always been like the point guard on every single team that he's played with. But I think at this point of his career, having another point guard will be dope or at least another plus ball handler. They don't really have that right now. And at the end of the day, you gotta find shooting. You have to find shooting. And I think a lot of things can be remedied, but even that formula is not gonna be good enough.