Locked On Lakers - Daily Podcast On The Los Angeles Lakers

It's not exactly a rumor, more a suggestion. On the "Run It Back" podcast, former Laker DeMarcus Cousins suggested the purple and gold swap Austin Reaves for Dillon Brooks. No doubt, the Suns wing, who is having a fantastic year, has been linked to the Lakers in rumors before, but the suggestion from Cousins got a lot of attention.  Could it happen? Suns owner Mat Ishbia shot it down on Monday, fo...

At halftime, Sunday's game against the Memphis Grizzlies looked like it might be one of the more frustrating losses of the year, as LA allowed 65 points to an undermanned Memphis squad, and couldn't get any real rhythm to their offense.  By the end, all was well in the word.  Final score, 120-114. A strong push in the fourth quarter from LeBron James (26 points, 10 assists, one turnover) combined...

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After Tuesday's loss to Detroit, JJ Redick noted that the Lakers have an identity problem. In the sense that they don't really have an identity.  For Thursday's show, we talked about part of that equation, namely leadership. The team is in a transition from a LeBron-voiced squad to one where Luka Dončić is both the face and the leader, and unquestionably the team's best player. But the styles are...

After the loss Tuesday to Detroit, Lakers coach JJ Redick was asked about the team's identity, and whether they've been able to forge one. His answer... not really, but they're trying. There are plenty of reasons. Injuries, first and foremost. The Lakers simply haven't been able to keep not just individual players on the floor, bujt run with a reasonably consistent rotation since the beginning of...

The Kings on Sunday provided a brief respite from their troubles, but the Lakers were neck deep in them again on Tuesday, with the Eastern Conference-leading Detroit Pistons in town. The Lakers seemed to be outplayed in the first half, with the Pistons shooting 68%, Cade Cunningham shooting 9-13, and the Lakers turning the ball over 12 times, yet the purple and gold entered the break down by five....

Technically, the last time LeBron James missed the All-Star Game was ... last year, when he couldn't play because of injury. The last time he wasn't on the team? 2004, in his rookie season.  But that streak is in jeopardy. James, who has only played 14 games this season, is way behind in the first round of fan voting, released Monday by the NBA. If he can't make an electoral comeback, he'd have to...

The Lakers got some bad news this weekend, as the team learned Austin Reaves is going to miss weeks with a recurrence of his calf injury, but even with that in mind, a loss against the nine-win Sacramento Kings at home? For the team's fourth setback in a row?  That would set off all the alarms.  No worries! The Lakers took care of business, getting out to a lead in the first half that they never r...

It seems to be getting worse before it gets (hopefully) better.  The Lakers spoiled Christmas with a very, very lackluster effort against the visiting Houston Rockets. The Lakers were flat from the get go, fell down by 12 after the first quarter, and never really threatened to get back into it. They simply aren't functioning well enough on the defensive side of the ball to reliably make a comeback...

The game was going well enough, until it didn't. Playing without Luka Dončić and Rui Hachimura, and with Austin Reaves back in the lineup but restricted in his minutes (he came off the bench), there was certainly a chance the Lakers could struggle, but man alive, once the struggle kicked in near the end of the first half, things got very ugly very fast.  Halfway through the second, the Lakers were...

The last time the Lakers played the Suns, there were fireworks. There were technical fouls. There was a tremendous amount of tension between Suns wing Dillon Brooks and LeBron James. Tuesday in Phoenix, it's another round in this longstanding rivalry. They are, to paraphrase Muhammad Ali, gonna get it on, because they don't get along.  The rest of the game, however, could look significantly differ...

The Lakers have had a tremendous amount of turnover in their lineups this season, thanks to a string of injuries to important players. Moreover, those injuries seem to be overlapping in ways that make it impossible for one group to get a high number of reps. Yet the team is still winning a lot of games.  So are the injuries helping the Lakers build resilience and chemistry that will serve them wel...

The Lakers have not been an offensive juggernaut this year on a game-to-game basis, and on Saturday against the Clippers at the Intuit Dome arrived without Austin Reaves, Deandre Ayton and as a late addition to the injury report, Rui Hachimura. That's a lot of production in street clothes.  And then Luka Dončić took the floor, and looked uncomfortable physically from the jump. It only got worse. B...

The Lakers seemed content just to run with Utah and try to exchange buckets for a while. The first half in particular was some of the worst defense you'll see at the NBA level.  After the break, though, the Lakers started to right the ship on that side, and down the stretch clearly bumped up the effort. The result was a 143-135 win over the Jazz in Utah. Luka Dončić led the way with a dominant 45...

The Lakers have a sneaky-tough game in Utah Thursday against a Jazz team that has righted the ship after an awful start to the year. LA, still without Austin Reaves, will also be short Deandre Ayton, who will miss the game with an elbow injury.  Maxi Kleber should be available, so the Lakers will have two centers to use against Utah's size, but how will JJ Redick change his rotation?  He certainly...

December 15 is a big day in the NBA, as the vast majority of players who moved in the offseason become eligible to be traded. Many around the league consider it the unofficial kickoff of "trade season."  The Lakers enter this stretch of weeks in an interesting spot: Obviously quite competitive (just look at the standings) and obviously flawed (just look at how they've lost, when they've lost). Fig...

The Lakers found a fun formula against the Phoenix Suns Sunday, one that lifted their defensive energy and built up a big fourth quarter lead. (We're ignoring the part about how they gave all of it away, before winning in the end.) It involved a lot of defensive pressure and offensive rebounding, both of which were big contributions of Jarred Vanderbilt in his return to the lineup.  Vando had a gr...

That game was bananas, but in the end, the Lakers win.  116-114 was the final, as the Suns and Lakers went back and forth with some wild runs, an individual rivalry that got super heated betwen LeBron James and Dillon Brooks, tons of foul calls and almost incomprehensible rebounding figures throughout (at one point deep into the second half, the Lakers had more offensive rebounds than defensive)....

The Lakers got thumped by San Antonio on Wednesday, and in what is becoming a trend for this Lakers squad, when they lose, they lose.   But this loss, more than others, seems to have created significant attention around the team, how it's constructed, and whether or not its flaws are correctable. Because the Spurs were faster than the Lakers, they put pressure on the defense the Lakers couldn't ha...

The Lakers have been eliminated from NBA Cup play, losing to San Antonio in the quarterfinals Wednesday night at Crypto.  There wasn't much to love in this one. The Lakers got off to a decent enough start, but once San Antonio found their legs, the Lakers just couldn't keep up. Final score, 132-119.  The big issues were defensive, where the Lakers simply couldn't string together enough stops to ha...

Twenty-three games into the season, by and large, the Lakers have been a fairly unimpressive defensive team. It's not necessarily a shock, given a roster that doesn't feature many plus-defenders, particularly among the players slated to log the most minutes. For the opening three quarters of contests, the Lakers often get by despite their defense, rather than through the strength of it. However, o...

Wednesday night's game against the Spurs at Crypto.com isn't just big because it's a Cup quarterfinal, and a victory means more $ for players and coaches with a chance for even bigger checks. It's also because San Antonio represents a major challenge for the Lakers, and an opportunity to send a message against a high level Western Conference team. Spurs star Victor Wembanyama won't be in uniform,...

LeBron James bounced back with a huge game Sunday in Philadelphia. Does that mean he's back? What exactly does "back" mean for LeBron this year? Will it look different than last year? Than years before? It seems the Lakers are going to handle him with a little more care than the last two seasons, and with postseason awards likely out of reach (he won't hit the minimum game threshold) does that giv...

The Lakers have had to scramble over the weekend to keep lineups on the floor, but Sunday the gang was (save Marcus Smart) back together.  Luka Dončić was back from Slovenia, where he was celebrating the birth of his daughter, and LeBron James was back in the lineup after missing Friday's game in Boston.  They certainly needed both. LeBron had, without question, his most impactful game since retur...

You can't fault the effort, whether from Austin Reaves (9-18, 36 points, eight assists) or the team in general. The Lakers were missing Luka Dončić, still away from the team, as well as LeBron James and Marcus Smart, and the Celtics came into Friday's game red hot.  In theory, nothing had to give, and it didn't.  The Lakers lose, 126-105.  There aren't that many takeaways in this one, to be honest...