What do you think about the Laker team now?

Do 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 part 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 back to the Laker Film Room podcast. I'm Pete, joined, as always, by Darius and Mike. And we had a week away to kind of step back. It's always important to not only zoom in, but zoom out. And in the context of this week, I got thinking about this 2021 Lakers

season. And going forward, this is a team that I think is very difficult to evaluate because of

the injuries. And so I think there are dangers on both sides. In the last pod that we recorded, I mentioned that

if we blame everything on injuries, we're going to miss some important lessons along the way.

But on the other side of that, I think there are dangers too, where certain things that would

have worked had we had LeBron and AD could not, because the team is fundamentally built around LeBron and

AD. And we make decisions with respect to things like ball handling and shot creation where

LeBron and AD are expected to absorb so much of that responsibility that more far resources

can be devoted toward the defense event. I do think that fundamentally the concept of this team is great defense plus LeBron and AD.

But Darius, as we saw in the absence of those guys, they only played three consecutive

games once after Valentine's Day, and that was games one, two, and three.

And this team could never get their footing on the offensive end.

In the absence of those guys, we were pretty bad on the offensive end, even while being good on defense.

And so my question is, Darius, how do we thread that needle in a more broad view of blaming the appropriate amount on injuries while still being able to recognize,

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