Hello, Lakers Nation. Welcome into the Lakers Nation.com podcast.

I am Trevor Lane back in studio and the Lakers on a five-game winning streak.

But how real is it?

There's a lot of naysayers out there saying this means nothing, saying the Lakers haven't beat anybody.

Let's dig in.

Let's see.

How much does this five-game winning streak really matter?

What does it prove about this team?

I'm going to get into that plus some saltiness coming from New Orleans.

I certainly experienced that in the building, and we also heard it from the New Orleans

Pelicans, announced crew.

We're going to get into that and why they're wrong. Let's dive into that. Plus, we've got to talk about this other guy. Maybe you've heard of him. Dalton Connect. Perhaps the rookie of the year. Well, if he keeps playing the way he is right now, just maybe that'll happen. But let's start with this. The five-game winning streak. Are the Lakers for real here with this winning streak

right now? Check it out. Right now, the Lakers are currently the four seed in the NBA's Western

Conference. So that's obviously impressive because we all know how deep the West is. This is not the

east where you can be a below 500 team and fall backwards into the playoffs.

No, this is the Western Conference where you need to actually win games in order to get

into the postseason. Again, the Lakers nine and four, their point differential is not great.

You look at the Grizzlies, have a plus 7.7 point differential and they're 8 and 6.

It just depends on how many blowouts you've been in right now this time of year. Point differential becomes a bigger stat the farther into the season we get. And what it can often do is be a separator. Again, when we get a bigger sample size, it can be a separator in terms of overall quality. usually you get a sense of how good a team is really by point differential once we get,

you know, halfway through the season, maybe even a little bit further.

But right now the Lakers just plus one in point differential.

There are teams that have a better point differential that are below them in the standings,

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