Hello, Lakers Nation. Welcome in to the Lakers Nation.com podcast. My name's Trevor Lane, and it's game day. Lakers Grizzlies. The Lakers taking on the gris for the third and final time this season, 6.30 p.m. Pacific Time. Come hang out right here. The Lakersnation.com YouTube channel. We'll have our live play by play going on. It's like a party. 630 p.m. Pacific time. Then right after after we'll have the live Lakersnation.com post game show. All right. On today's show, I want to get into the injury situation for the Los Angeles Lakers, what things could be looking like for tonight's game, but also the keys to victory for the Lakers to make it a perfect 3-0 against the Gris on the season.

The Lakers have already locked up the tiebreaker against Memphis so far.

As I'm recording this, this is prior to Saturdays games taking place.

But right now, this is what the table looks like in the Western Conference.

The Lakers currently sitting as the five seat.

Again, there are games coming tonight that could

change this and those of you seeing this on Sunday this may shift just a little bit but right

now the Lakers are the five seed the Memphis Grizzlies currently sitting as the nine seed

they have been playing a bit better as of late but this is a very mid team and I don mean that in a disrespectful way, just they're a very average team across the board in most of their statistical categories. And that means that they're a team that if you don't show up to play against them, if you don't really bring it, they can beat you. As we saw against the grisle last go round Friday night, the grizz, you know, they even took the lead at some points, took the lead in the fourth quarter, in fact, and the Lakers were able to battle back and ultimately get the win. I thought their execution down the stretch was great. But this is a team that the Lakers have to show up against in order to get the win. They've got to really play a win tonight over Memphis would not suggest suddenly their championship contenders

and all is right in the world or anything like that. But it's an important game to get a win for.

And we look at the stretch coming up for L.A. We look at their upcoming schedule. There's opportunities

here. Second night of a back-to-back against San Antonio coming up on Wednesday. You've got Tuesday night in New Orleans. Great. The worst team of the Washington Conference right now. Then you have second night of back-to-back in San Antonio. That's tough. If you look at the rest of the month of January, you've got a lot of road games and that's a challenge. But they're not unwinnable games here.

Even though they're road games, you've got a pretty decent selection of opponents here.

Now, Atlanta already gave the Lakers some trouble with their athleticism.

That's coming up.

Sacramento, the Lakers have beat them.

They beat the Bucks as well, though the Bucks can certainly give you a run any given night.

Charlotte, you've got Portland, Toronto.

I mean, these are not the top tier clubs in the NBA. Some of these are above 500 teams. We talk about Toronto, the Raptors, what they've done this season. Denver is banged up when the Lakers see them on the 20th. They're not going to have Yokic. They're not going to have Valanchunis. It's in Denver, so you know the nuggets are still going to put up a fight there. But the schedule for the month of January, despite being road heavy, I think there's an opportunity here for the Lakers to stack up some wins. And it's going to be very important that they do so, particularly with the injuries this club has suffered. They've got to make sure they get wins when they can. And tonight is going to be very important that they do so, particularly with the injuries this club has suffered.

They've got to make sure they get wins when they can. And tonight is going to be an opportunity

for them to do just that. Memphis, again, a team. We've seen them already beat twice. You need to do it

a third time. Stack up these wins. It's difficult to beat a team twice in a row like this,

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