Hello and welcome to the Hoop Collective podcast. We talk about the MBA, which we're doing

on Tuesday afternoon. Hello for me from the Spectrum Center in Charlotte, North Carolina,

where I will be at Kevin Durant's first game as a son on Wednesday night.

Enjoying me from across the country in Seattle, Washington is the machine Kevin Pelton. What's

up, Pelton? Nothing much. So by the way, did I see that the Seattle storm just sold a portion of

the team for evaluation of $150 million? Yes, which is the highest valuation ever for a female

professional sports franchise. So a pretty incredible milestone. Wow, after bluesing Brianna Stewart.

Yeah, yeah. Wow. That was, I mean, it's just a portion of the team. It's not someone buying for 150, but

just take a moment to let that sink in for a second. Anyway, okay, so it's March, at least it's March

when this pod comes out. It's February in this exact moment. But that means it's time for large

sample size theater. We had you on in the fall, talk about small sample size theater. We're going to

revisit some of those topics. But before we get into it, I just, I think we need to take a look at

what happened with the big news. In addition to Durant coming back, LeBron exiting. So LeBron is

going to be out for multiple weeks. What was reported that it'll be two weeks before he even gets

re-evaluated. I've heard what the injury is, but I don't, I'm that's not confirmed. So I don't

want to say for sure, and then get attributed to me and then not be 100% right. But I've heard it's

basically it's not a sprained ankle. It's a it's a tissue injury. And you know, that's there's

nothing you can do. You can't play on it. You just got to let it heal. So the Lakers were just ramping

up. Belton, they had actually moved up in the standings. Their schedule was favorable, although

they're playing in Memphis tonight, which won't be, would have been hard even with LeBron played.

What do you think they're outlook now realistically is, and by the way, I think the Angelo Russell's

going to miss a couple more games with his own ankle injury maybe by the end of the week. But so

...