What do you think about the Laker team now?

You follow the box scores of the games every day?

Just the Lakers.

You're kidding.

That is really a compliment.

I was pleased to see you smile at the top bar show

because once the game starts, you have a game face.

You don't smile much out there.

I don't think you have to do things for money anymore. Correct. What's up, Laker fans? Welcome to the Laker Film Room podcast. I'm Pete, joined by Darius. And the Lakers just wrapped up Summer League with a pair of back-to-back wins after I had been cussing them out for how bad they were. They pulled a couple out. Brani really started to look comfortable.

I think we'll talk about him a little more in the second segment. But the headline for me, Dee, was Dalton Connect. You know, you always want to see what your first round pick looks like. Hope he looks like the best player on the floor. And there were a lot of minutes out there where it didn't take very long to see like, oh, yeah, that's the NBA player right there.

100%. And I think that's what you're looking for whenever you're evaluating a prospect, or at least it's what I am, particularly when I watch college basketball, which is infrequent or summer league when you're just familiarizing yourself with these guys.

It's like who pops and who looks

like the guy who can play at the next level on a basketball court where not nearly everyone

is going to show that they can play at that level. There is a level of smoothness to connect's

game that I truly appreciate. And I commented about this

on Twitter. But one of the things that stood out to me about Connect is how balanced he is

when he's playing. He rarely seems offensively at least to be wrong-footed or unable to do the thing that he wants to do.

There were plenty of times, Pete, where he was moving off of a pick.

The Lakers ran a lot of, like, like, curl actions off of wide pin downs for their wings.

And his footwork coming off of screens, his footwork in getting ready to shoot the ball off of movement.

His footwork when he's just sidestepping into an open space and getting his feet ready to get his shot off was super impressive to me.

And I'm always looking for translatable skills when I'm not familiar with a player at all.

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