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 in tonight. The Lakers face another short-handed Western Conference opponent in the Minnesota Timberwolves. But we're going to start today, D, with a bit of a broader conversation, a conversation about belief and a Lakers team that I think a lot of people are changing their minds on right now. So talk to us about where we're going. Yeah, so the Lakers are embarking on a stretch of what are supposed to be really tough games. Obviously, the Timberwolves game, like there could be some guys injured, but they have a back-to-back. Friday, they play against the Clippers, and there's going to be a month-long stretch of some really tough games. And this comes right at the same time that the Lakers have had a few statement wins. They're one of the hottest teams in the league, if not the hottest team in the league, and are playing some great basketball.

And they've ascended the ranks, Pete, in terms of, like, how much people believe in this Lakers team to make some noise in the playoffs and potentially be a team that can contend for the title.

And I was thinking about this this morning.

And I was sort of struck by our conversation

yesterday about this new geometry of the Lakers and like Luca and LeBron and the shape of their

two man game, and how it's just different than what we've seen recently. And it made me think

about even the construction of this team and how we actually don't have, as Lakers fans, a point of reference for a team that's built like this.

A team that's built almost exclusively around perimeter stars and whose best players are almost all perimeter players and whose best look might even be or probably is a quote unquote small ball look.

We grew up on the Showtime teams and that was a team built around Magic and Kareem.

And then there was the Kobe and Shaq team.

And then there was the Kobe and Powell team.

And then even the LeBron and AD team, LeBron is technically a forward and

AD was technically a forward for that team as well. That team was massive. But in crunch time,

that was basically LeBron playing point guard and AD playing center. It was a perimeter star and an

interior star. And so I wouldn't quite call it an existential crisis or anything,

...