Locked On Lakers - Daily Podcast On The Los Angeles Lakers

Lakers fans (and NBA observers) have spent much of the year discounting the team's fairly impressive record by noting that most of the losses have come against the league's more successful teams. Often in blowout fashion. When will LA beat good the good teams?  Well, Sunday the Knicks rolled into Crypto.com Arena as a Certified Good Team, and the Lakers used great defense, consistent effort and go...

Sometimes your best player decides he's going to win the game early.  That was Luka Dončić on Friday against Indiana. With the Lakers short LeBron James, Deandre Ayton and Maxi Kleber, Luka was in control from the jump, helping the Lakers get out to an early lead (despite some inconsistencies in the team's play) that they never gave up. For good measure, Donćić added nine boards and three steals....

Thursday, LeBron James passed Kareem Abdul-Jabbar to become the NBA's all time leader in field goals. Impressive! And part of a string of records and "passed (player) to become (thing)" accomplishments he'll continue piling up until he quits.  But while it's cool for the Lakers to have this stuff happen while he's wearing the purple and gold, the bigger question for this season is how his play, wh...

The Lakers started Thursday's game about as poorly as you could imagine, failing to get a bucket and turning it over. Denver went up 11-0 before the Lakers even scratched.  It meant the Lakers were playing uphill the rest of the way, and will be kicking themselves over the results. They chipped away and chipped away over the course of the game, and put themselves in a position to win, using strong...

Chris Mannix (SI) is the latest NBA reporter to relay the Lakers' plan to pattern an offseason roster build around Luka Doncic in a similar way to the roster the Dallas Mavericks put around him during a 2024 run to the NBA Finals. It makes sense, but how viable and realistic is this, from where the Lakers currently stand?  HOSTS: Andy and Brian Kamenetzky  Everydayer Club If you never miss an epis...

The Lakers have won three straight... but against opponents that won't exactly impress anyone. Thursday night, however, the Lakers visit Denver, and while the Nuggets are short key players (Peyton Watson, Aaron Gordon most notably) they still have Nikola Jokic and Jamal Murray, and Denver is always a tough place to play. So what would it mean to go on the road and get the win? How can the Lakers g...

The Lakers as a team have been up and down following the All-Star break, but the performance of the Big Three -- Luka Donćić, LeBron James and Austin Reaves -- has improved while all three share the court. The well-known data point of their poor performance over the first 152 minutes together this season (which took until February to happen) has been balanced over a much stronger result over the l...

The Lakers found themselves in a bit of a rock fight on Tuesday, playing a Pelicans team with a lousy record but some quality players, and heading into the fourth were actually down three.   And in a nice turn, LA used a very strong defensive stretch in combination with some balanced offense and timely shotmaking and in the end. Down by four with about nine minutes to go, the Lakers outscored New...

The buyout period has come and gone, and the Lakers don't seem to have missed out on much by signing guard Kobe Bufkin as quickly as they did. In the end, very few players of note actually changed squads, and of those that did (Cam Thomas to Milwaukee, for example) it's hard to see how the Lakers would have been their choice.  Would Jeremy Sochan (now in New York) be playing more than Bufkin? Prob...

It's good for the Lakers to have the Big Three available, and even better when the Big Three actually produce positive results as a trio, as they've slowly started to do.  But it does require some sacrifices from all three. And most notably, from Austin Reaves.  AR put up big numbers at the start of the season when LeBron James was unavailable, and particularly big numbers when James and Luka Donč...

When the Lakers acquired Luke Kennard at the trade deadline, most fans understood the team was getting one of the best shooters in the league, not just this year but throughout his career.  The good news for the team is Kennard's skill set is much more diverse than just shooting. He's been extremely effective from two point range, at the rim, and as a secondary playmaker and even a solid rebounder...

The Lakers got up early, taking fast control of Sunday's game at home against the Sacramento Kings, using the same balanced first quarter offense that served them well Saturday against the Warriors. Up 38-16 after 12 minutes, they threw it in cruise control a little early, letting the Kings get to within 10 in the third before again putting things in fifth gear.  From there, the Lakers built up a...

To say the Lakers needed a palate cleanser is a major understatement. Having lost three in a row, a fourth on Saturday against a shorthanded Golden State team could have led to disaster.  Instead, the Lakers got a reminder that they can, in fact, play quality basketball, taking control early of a Warriors team that couldn't hit a shot and ever giving it up. Final score, 129-101 It was a balanced e...

Oh, Deandre Ayton.  As the Lakers season has tailed off after a hot start, so too has Ayton's play. He is both symptom and disease, becoming less involved offensively and less engaged overall, which makes him less involved, which makes him less engaged, and so on. But because Ayton can't give himself the ball, he's also a good measure for how little the ball moves these days with the offense. That...

The Lakers found an interesting way to change the subject after a terrible loss to the Magic on Tuesday. Thursday, the Lakers went into Phoenix to face a Suns squad without both Devin Booker and Dillon Brooks, and still found a way to lose, 113-110. As it was against Orlando, the Lakers had opportunities to pull ahead and absolutely could have won, but instead lost in the final seconds of the game...

All reports have indicated that the Lakers, under new owner Mark Walter, will be following the Dodgers model that has worked so successfully up the road at Chavez Ravine.  Walter has already transferred old friend Lon Rosen from the Dodgers' front office to El Segundo, where he'll replace long time Jeanie Buss confidant Tim Harris in a senior business position. But for fans, what they want to see...

The honeymoon isn't exactly over -- Lakers fans are still overwhelmingly happy to have him -- but the part of the Luka Dončić Era where he's fairly immune to criticism seems to be ending.  After arguably his worst game (as a scorer at least) against the Magic on Tuesday, one in which he rather inexplicably passed up an opportunity to take a game winning shot off an ATO drawn up for him, Luka was a...

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The Lakers had this one, and then they didn't. Final score, 110-109 loss to Orlando at home, finishing the homestand at 4-4.   This one stung. Despite a scoreless first half from Austin Reaves (who finished with 17 points) and an 8-24 night from Luka Dončić, the Lakers had every opportunity to win on Tuesday. Their execution down the stretch, which had been consistently good all year, was not. And...

The Lakers have a ton of work to do before they can realistically expect to make a run in the Western Conference playoffs.  They don't have a lot of time to figure stuff out, but if they want to reach whatever ceiling exists for them, they need to both win games and improve in the process. That can start tonight vs. Orlando at the Crypt, a stretch of seven games against sub-.500 or banged up teams...

Austin Reaves struggled big against the Celtics on Sunday.  He has struggled relatively frequently against the NBA's best defenses this season, and had a rough go against the Minnesota Timberwolves in last year's playoffs. With huge decisions coming, it has a lot of people, whether fans or those who follow the league for a living, asking ahrd questions about his long term future in LA, especially...

Sunday's blowout loss to the hated Celtics was desperately starved for moments Lakers fans could embrace, but unveiling Pat Riley's statue certainly qualified as a rousing success, even acknowledging the incredibly low bar to clear. The franchise icon instantly recalls memories of championships, innovative basketball, boundless fun, and an indelible culture. The immortalization of Riles was a no-b...

For a quarter, it was competitive, but over the course of their 111-89 loss to Boston at home on Sunday afternoon, the Lakers slowly lost cohesion and composure, discipline and spirit. They were eventually overwhelmed by a far more aggressive and confident Celtics team.  The Lakers gave up a big number to Jalen Brown, but were especially burned by a hyper-efficient Payton Pritchard, who lit them u...

For the first time in all season, the Lakers had the full roster intact and ready to play. And it looked in Friday's game against the Clippers that the Lakers might run away with things, so good was their shotmaking in the first half of the game.  But ultimately, the Lakers needed to fight for this one, and it became a pretty satisfying 125-122 win.  Luka Dončić led the way for the Lakers with 38...

The NBA is reportedly planning to institute new rules for next season designed to combat tanking. It remains to be seen exactly what those changes will look like, but a few of the ideas being kicked around, according to ESPN's Shams Charania, include:  First-round draft picks can be protected only for top-four or top-14-plus selections Lottery odds freeze at the trade deadline or a later date No l...