Hello, Lakers Nation. Welcome in to the Lakers Nation.com live postgame show. I am Trevor Lane,

the Lakers coming up short to say the least in the preseason opener against the Phoenix Sons.

Did not look particularly good. It was a rough outing for them. There were some positives, though,

to take away. Overall, tough night, not the way that you want to open preseason, but there were some positives we'll get into. We'll also talk a little bit about the negatives, why things ended up the way that they did for the Lakers in this one. Joining me, maybe we'll need some optimism. It's Matt the optimist for Alta. Matt, how you doing? Doing better, Trevor. now that I don't have to watch that preseason game again. Now that the game is over, you're here doing, but is that what you're telling me? Look, I am excited that Lakers basketball is back. First and foremost, like, don't get it twisted. I'm so happy. Like, yours are back on the floor. But at the same time, that game was not the most enjoyable one to watch.

And we're going to hope for better days ahead, Trevor, because at least get the Lakers

this.

They set the bar low.

Now there's only up.

They've lowered expectations is what you're saying with this performance.

It's going to be hard to do worse than today. Let me, let me ask you, because there's, there's going to be a back and forth here in this. And there already is amongst Lakers fans. There's the, it's only preseason side. And there's the, but they looked awful. This is, this is caught. See, I told you this was bad because of x y z whatever i was upset about over the off season was bad right where do you land

between those can you totally dismiss this and say it's just preseason and there were a ton of guys

out or do you say no this actually looked bad even for pre-s like how do you reconcile that yeah it's a

tough one and like look i don't think uh there's a right way to to take uh for for processes like this for

preseason i personally fall on the i'm going to wait to see the full team uh i know no one is going to like

to hear that i know people are going to be like, well, whoever the Lakers still had that,

there should have looked better. And to a point, I agree with that. I think, like, on a really, really important thing to consider is just the idea of roles and slotting into those said roles. And I think tonight you saw a little bit of its preseason. let's let let's just see what guys can do if they are going to be if you know they're not going to be asked to do this in the regular season I don't think but let's just see what they look like in preseason trying it out and kind of go from there so I saw a lot of that from the role players especially but I'm not surprised I'm sure we'll talk about them later but I'm not surprised like someone like Austin Ree Austin Reeves, who was in his regular role, looked just fine against, you know, the Sons who are basically playing their starting rotation, which is another thing we should probably talk about, minus a couple guys. Like a lot of the players we saw in the Sons will be playing legitimate minutes for them this season, whereas the Lakers had a few guys, obviously, that made some appearances. but I think if you're talking about regulars, you're really talking about Austin and Rui, D'Andre Aden, for sure, Jake Laravia and, you know, Vando.

I'll tell you this.

I think that if you are right now making any kind of a definitive statement in any direction about the Lakers.

See this team is awful.

See this player is great, whatever.

Beyond way too soon for that.

I don't think there's anything you can take away from one preseason game and make a definitive statement about what a team is or is not.

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