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tease and exclusions apply 18 plus gamblerware.org. Good morning and welcome to the NBA Daily Ding here on the Athletic NBA NBA show.

I am Jared Weiss.

I'm joined by Mo DeKeele.

We got Brian Smith on the boards.

Do not forget you can find the Daily Ding every weekday morning here on the Athletic NBA show, and be sure to subscribe to The Athletic if you haven't already at Theathletic.com slash ding. Let's get into it. Mo, we have. Obviously, we're starting with the Lakers because LeBron was incredible at the end of this game. They beat the Sacramento Kings 122 to 114, and LeBron pretty much did everything at the end of this game.

I mean, he was unbelievable.

I mean, he knocks down two threes down the stretch, drives on Damien Jones and gets an and one.

You know, goes completely ballistic and gets super hyped up about the,

the Ann one, talks a little trash to the King's bench and things like that.

He was awesome at 14

points in the fourth quarter to finish with 31 like he just said all right cool like it was a very

average lebron game jared for the first three quarters and then he blew up when you have those

possessions in crunch time where he's just standing there with the ball at the three point line you know

he's going to shoot i don't know why guys don't force him off the line and just completely crowded him. You know he's going to shoot it. Maybe you're hoping that he breaks those heat checks, but he was nailing those heat checks. And then, of course, he just started getting downhill at the very end, a couple of possessions where they kept the ball alive and he was the one coming in the attack with that finger roll off the glass or getting under the hoop and just continue the muscle through. But at that very end there, that big clutch layup goes over to Tristan Thompson, probably tells him, good for you for taking responsibility. But I was kidding. He probably tells him. You're going for the low blow already. I mean, come on. Tristan set himself out for that one. If you don't know what that is, you can Google that one later. But so I. But you know what, Jared? I'm not that mad about them not pressing for him to shoot the three because you actually want LeBron shooting those threes, make or miss. The one that bothers me is the drive that they gave up to Jones. Yo, get the ball out of his hands. Jones can't guard him. Send a second man. Like, the Lakers are not a good three-point shooting team. You know, although they shot it decent tonight going 11 to 32 and 34.4% from the field. I mean, that was all Malik Monk in this one, but yeah. Right. I mean, you're just like, but just like live with that. Don't let LeBron go downhill on the guy you just brought in, too, right? Like, don't know. Bad idea. Yeah, I mean, credit to Damia Jones. I thought he did pretty decent in this game starting. He did as best as he could against LeBron Jane. And you're right, no offense to him. But that's not going to be good enough. Send the second guy, get it out of his hands, Jared. That's all I'm saying. Malik Monk, is he the second best player on the Lakers right now? I mean, hell, he's playing like he's shooting the piss out of the ball. 6.11 from 3. He's in a real special groove overall on a pretty strong tear lately for the Lakers. And this is the kind of stuff I thought we'd see from Malik Munk. Like we saw kind of a little bit of a flash of this last season in Charlotte.

And that's why I thought it was a good pickup when the Lakers got it.

Didn't start out that way. But now we're beginning to see him kind of look a lot more comfortable in the offense. Yeah, he was awful to start the year, but since if you go to Christmas where he dropped 20 against the nets and a loss, he's had four 20-point games in that span. He had 24 in this one. He had 18 on 6 for 11 shooting against Portland the other night on New Year's Eve. I mean, Monk has been a consistent and reliable score for them. I mean, not much else we can say. Like, that's what they need offensively, right? Is somebody that can knock down shots and things like that. And that's what they need offensively right is somebody that

can knock down shots and things like that and that's what they brought malik monk in for and it's

...