Hello, Lakers Nation. Welcome into the Lakers Nation.com live podcast. I'm Trevor Lay. It's Monday night. We're here talking Lakers basketball with all of you.

Joining me tonight on the show. It's editor extraordinaire. Daniel, thanks for coming on.

Yeah, absolutely. Just watched a good playoff basketball game.

So definitely in the mood to talk some hoops here.

Yeah, so the Thunder go up 3-1 on the Wolves.

I'm my biggest takeaway, well, maybe not biggest, but a big takeaway from that game is

it's time.

It is time the NBA needs to legislate out fouling up three. I don't blame the thunder. It's the smart decision to make in that situation, but it's also the smart decision in the NBA because you're taking one of the most exciting plays in the game and turning it into one of the most boring plays in the NBA, in the NBA, and that is a free throw shooting contest. It's time. Let's get rid of this.

Yeah, I could not agree more. Like you said, I think we should be clear that we're not hating on OKC for doing or hating on the rule for existing. Like, obviously, if the Lakers were in a similar situation, given the current rules, I would want them to foul because that's a smart thing to do. but I do think it is an easy fix to get rid of it.

You just make it similar to a take foul where you give them one shot and the ball. And then obviously, teams wouldn't be doing it then. And we would get the great finishes that, you know, we want to see in these playoff type games where, you know, it's close throughout. You know, it could go either way. but obviously, you know, when a team's fouling up three, that's, that's pretty tough to come back from as we saw tonight. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Now, we did see that burn OKC in the previous series against the Nuggets, but still, just in general. I want to see, I want to see the ball in the air with the buzzer sounding and everybody's holding there.

But you want that like that is the moment in basketball and you take that away when you're fouling up three.

And so I'd like to see them legislate that out.

But the Thunder now the prohibitive favorites to win the NBA championship this year.

Do you see down 3-1, I don't think the wolves come back.

You never know.

I think that's the one theme of the playoffs this year is you just never know what's going to happen.

But I don't see the wolves coming back.

And I don't think either the Knicks or the Pacers can really give the Thunder too much trouble.

Yeah, no, I'm with you. Like I I think OKC might lose, like, one more game the rest of this playoffs. Like, I'm with you. I think they'll close out Minnesota at home where, you know, OKC's been so great. Their home crowd's great. And then either of the East teams, I don't see them taking more than like a game off the Thunder. So, yeah, it just feels like OKC's here, which was the case all regular season long. So it's not some huge surprise or anything. But, you know, credit to them, we've seen, you know, their role players have stepped up in a big way. And tonight we saw their stars kind of blossom before our eyes, right? Like that's kind of what every, that's kind of been the knock on OKC is like who's the second and third guy, like are, you know, Jdub and check going to step up and become, you know, the stars that that they have been in the regular season. And that's kind of what we saw tonight. So, yeah, tough team to beat, obviously a lot of depth and obviously a lot of youth as well so they're not going anywhere for a while

you know what's crazy i actually was looking at this earlier today okayc has actually drafted

and traded away a bunch of really good players like they've had so many picks that i think they've

actually made some mistakes like they drafted alper and Schengun and traded him away. They drafted

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