 What's the word y'all? It might be time for Rob Palinke to wake up. Have you been around the channel for some time? You see my new strategy where I start off the video with a super strong statement to get new people to click on it and new people to subscribe. I just did it again to you. Subscribe if you're new around here. The Lakers are curling the five game win streak after winning Sacramento. And no matter what you think, no matter what I think, no matter what nobody think about the officiating, was it a foul? Was it a foul? It doesn't matter. Because the last buzzer ring and Lakers have more points and they're on a five game streak. Even if the last two men in the report come out and say he was not fouled, there's nothing we can do about it. You know what I'm saying? So we just got to accept the fact that this is won by the LA Lakers. And I'm being honest with you, I thought there was no chance they were gonna keep their head above water without Anthony Davis. Once he went down after that legendary streak he was going through, I thought the season was over. I mean, you might have assumed that the season was over beforehand, considering the expectations for LeBron, James, the team, whatever. It felt like they were gonna be a team on the outside of Lickenian. And I'm recording this video. They're the five game win streak. They're 19 and 21. And they're still currently on the outside of Lickenian because the Tim Wolves are also winning games. Shout out to them. So they're in the midst of playing some of their best team basketball, five game streak. The longest active streak of basketball tied with the Memphis Grizzlies and they're still not even in the play-in. But hey, I'm just saying there's a blueprint. There are things happening that you could be excited about as we continue throughout this season. And with them having these crumbs, these little pieces, them staying afloat without Anthony Davis and eventually them getting Anthony Davis back some day. They said he was progressing well so I don't know exactly what that means but he will come back eventually. The promise that Rob Polinka made this season, going into this season, he might have to actually try to fulfill those. So he might have lied to Bron. Polinka made his feelings clear that he wants James to retire as a Laker and promised to provide. Listen to this. He promised to provide him with every resource possible to compete for a championship each year. He's with the organization. And again, as I mentioned earlier, there's been a lot of reports about their hesitancy to throw the 2027 pick in the 2029 pick in any trades because they feel like this season might be somewhat lost. They felt like this was one of those seasons where we come back next year because we're gonna have another spot to sign another person to be alongside Anthony Davis and Bron and then we run it back. But the way the Lakers are playing now and the way LeBron James is talking in these post-game interviews, I don't wanna just play basketball for no reason. I wanna continue to compete. There might be pressure now to potentially throw in a 27 or 29 to get a player, the players, to keep this streak alive so they can feel more excited about making the playoffs, first of all, and making some noise once they're in there. And I think the most exciting thing if I'm a Lakers fan is seeing the other step up. I mean, we can make a 70-hour documentary about how great LeBron has been in this season with him being 38 years old at this point. Even tonight, another 37-point game clutch basket down the stretch. Like, it is ridiculous how good he's been. But we kinda expect that from Bron, even though he's still old. We don't expect the others to be performing well and in the midst of the streak, a lot of the players have been reliable. Dennis Schroeder is playing like the Dennis Schroeder that almost got well as the 80 a.m.s, 90 a.m.s, even though him and his agent say that was never on the table. He's playing like the player that we know he could be but he hasn't been in the last couple of seasons. Patrick Beverly is playing like the player. This is crazy. We give him Patrick Beverly, so look, it's a Pat Bev. He's playing like the player we've seen him play over the last couple of seasons. This season came to this, he couldn't hit a shot. But in his last 10 games, he's shooting almost 44% from the three-point line. That's a dub. And I gots to talk about that man in the middle because you lose the production that is Anthony Davis and you look at that roster and say, how the hell do we replace that? His name is Thomas Bryan. And Thomas Bryan has always been an up-and-down player but pre, was it Achilles, ACL, whatever, he had a major injury obviously. He was looking pretty good. And now, I mean tonight, he was a lot of the cases, the best player on the court outside of Bryan. And I guess outside of fourth-core Fox. And I guess outside of what DeMonte's about. Regardless, they're getting high-quality production from Thomas Bryan as well. And listen, Russ Ceasen has been as up-and-down as anybody. When he started off the year as a starter, he was terrible. And then they put him onto the bench. He was in sixth man in the year. I think he still might be the front runner for sixth-man of the year. They put him on the bench for a month. He was to guarantee that. And then last month, he took another step back in his efficiency and his turnover rate. But in the last couple games, at least during his streak, he's been playing some of his best basketball as a Laker. So you're getting all of that happening at the same time. And you're like, Rob, okay, we doing our part. Now, what can you do to help us elevate even further? Because outside of that, you still have like, want to scorn on Anderson, get him in it. And I know once Anthony Davis comes back, you're probably not gonna get a lot of those. But still, he's getting minutes. And I got a lot of love for Juan T, man. I'm super happy that he was able to get his championship and to get another contract post that. But like, as of right now, when I'm watching him play, I'm like, get those minutes to win you, Gabriel. That's the point we at right now. And I felt to mention Kendrick Nunn was an amazing tonight, but the previous night, he was really good to get Selena Hawks. So a lot of the role players are now stepping up to the point you want them to step up. The only thing is I would hope that for LeBron's sake, because I do want to watch Bron and playoff atmosphere again. There's not a lot of things about it as an NBA fan throughout the, I came in in 2003, 2004. So basically for the entirety of my lifetime, I've seen LeBron James competing playoff series at least until the last couple of seasons. I want to see it again. But the question is, and this is a conversation me and the guys had on the podcast here, our podcast here, the Studiwire podcast, if you're interested, what is out there? Cause right now it's not necessarily a buyer's market. How many teams have pieces that are selling right now that you can be interested in, that you can use 27 and or 29 to increase your odds? Cause I've been reading a lot of articles about potential deals and none of them make me be like, yes, that's the one. I am actually more interested in the traits that it's like two separate deals. One of them throw 27 and one of them throw 29 for two different players or a combination of three players or whatever it may be. Cause again, outside of, who's selling right now? If I look around the league, you can make an argument that the watch's wizard should be selling. Again, they probably never will. You can make an argument that the Toronto Raptors might end up selling, but Masai Ujiri doesn't take me as a seller. He always takes me as a move, a piece here and there and then we retool. He doesn't seem like a guy that's gonna like really, really sell. Hornets may have got some stuff that you received, but like this is not a buyer's market. The Pistons are always going to be the team that everybody's talking about because they have Bojan Bogdanovich and we know for sure that the production that we get from Bojan Bogdanovich is can be applicable, is that the word? Can be applied to every single other 29 teams. It don't matter if you're the Houston Rockets or you don't got nobody to create for him or if you got the best passer of all time on your team, he is going to be a productive and really good NBA player. And of course his name is tied to a team like the Lakers but like when this deadline hit, will the Lakers be able to put together the best packets for a guy like Bojan? But the thing that makes me the most excited about what the Lakers are doing right now is that the offense is good. If you remember they were the worst three point shooting team ever through the first couple of weeks of the NBA season. And during the last two weeks, they're a top 10 offense. The defense struggling, but they lost Anthony Davis who was a DPOY candidate before his injury. And I know everything is not sustainable. I don't expect Dennis Shroder to go out there and start averaging 20 points per game regularly like putting that up every night. But again, you're starting to see the corner be turned from them on the roster. And again, I said, I could talk about LeBron James and his greatness all day. I mean, it's kind of ridiculous what he's doing right now. So ridiculous that Skip Bayless who had been a hater of Bron for 20 seasons. It's like, I like him now. I also think that he did that because he was catching a lot of flak for the stupid ass tweet that he put out and shout out to DeMar Hamlin. I'm so happy that he's doing at least decent. And I mentioned that they're on the outside looking in still even with this five game winning streak. But you still do have teams like Utah Jazz who of course come down to earth and lost another one in Chicago today. You got the Portland Trailblazers who sit at 500 after a really good start. They're struggling, especially on the defensive side of the ball, the Phoenix Suns on a five game lose. So there are a lot of teams that are teetting around the edge and with another win from the Lakers and maybe a loss from one of these other teams I'm talking about, they're right back in the mix of things. They're right back in the mix of things. Things are so crunched up in both conferences basically that one win for the Lakers from have them going from the 12 seat all the way up to being out of the play in but one of the guaranteed six, that's how close it is. So if I'm Rob Polinka, I got to look at that and say if there's a chance we get in, there's a chance that we can win considering we have two players that are still playing at a superstar level when they're healthy and LeBron, James and Anthony Davis that has to be the things they're talking about. And I know they keep thinking about the future, the future, the future. We don't want to throw 27, we don't want to throw 29 because at that point we don't know where we're going to be as an organization. About 20, 27, LeBron, James is 42, something year three, he's 48 plus years old, Anthony Davis is mid 30 sweet. That pick might be number two. Think it might be something you're willing to trade if I'm Rob Polinka because we want to, like you promised to LeBron at the beginning of the season we want to maximize the opportunity for Bron to win. And right now what you've done to maximize they're still at 12th even though they're playing good basketball. And not even just good basketball doing this five game stress, they started off two and 10 and since then they're 17 and 11. 17 and 11 at 60% win rate, a 60% win rate would have them as the foresee behind the pelicans or tied with the pelicans. Now again, you can't just say, hey, we throwing away the first 12 games of the season but that's how good they have been recently that we can say that we're trending upward. And because of that we need to do, we got to do to get them in a position to win. Probably the worst thing that happened to them though or it's happening actively with them is the fact that the Bulls are seven and three in their last 10. I'm not there yet. I'm not there yet ladies and gentlemen. I think I made an apology tweet, like a pseudo apology tweet. I'm not there to check because I still believe that even though we're playing good basketball as of late other than us giving up 71 points to Donovan Mitchell we've been playing good basketball of late but I still think there is a hard ceiling on the steam but in the last couple of weeks, again other than that 71 we gave up, I've been enjoying the Bulls and a lot of people believe that if the Bulls are still struggling that DeMar DeRose is going to LA he been trying to get to LA for seven years now it feels like with something that they could have made happen. And now if the Bulls are winning they might say hey, instead of us being sellers or retoolers we might use that Portland Trailblazer picking by right now. So the Bulls winning right now is probably not the best for them but it is a long season and it is still a long time a little over a month until the trade that line and a lot of things can happen in a month's time. Again, if they keep this up. I mean the next couple of games against Denver that's the tough when Denver's playing great basketball and they don't lose at home and they're playing at the ball arena. They go against Dallas, Philly, dang. They go against Houston, Sacramento again. They have the fourth toughest schedule left in basketball. So it's not about to get easier. It's definitely not about to get easier but they got some good wins under their belt. Okay, so let me know what you think about Rapalinka, the LA Lakers and all the things above and I'll be in the comment section as I always am. Leave a like.