Hello, Lakers Nation. Welcome in to the Lakers Nation.com podcast. My name's Trevor Lane, and it's game day. Lakers Suns 7 p.m. Pacific time tonight. Come hang out on the Lakers Nation.com YouTube channel will be doing a little play-by-play, breaking down the game as it's happening, taking questions and comments from the chat. It's a good time, like I always say. It's like a party. come hang out 7 p.m. Pacific time tonight for Lakers Suns. On today's show, I want to preview this matchup. I'm particularly excited because this is as close as we're going to see to a full Lakers team, with the exception of maybe a few players, we'll see a full Lakers team. Luca Donchich in action. tonight his preseason debut, same thing with Marcus Smart. So I want to get into what we need to see in tonight's game. That's going to be the focal point of today's show. Not planning on a particularly long show for this one. I do have a few questions from our channel members that I'm going to get into towards the end of the show. Also a little personal message that I'm going to put in at the end. I want to keep the main thing, the main thing. And that's talking here about the Los Angeles Lakers, but just a little thing personal-wise that I want to throw in at the end of the show. So if you feel so inclined, I want to stick around until then, great. Otherwise, let's get into Lakers stuff here.

So let's start right here. Luca and Marcus Smart set to debut tonight for the Los Angeles Lakers.

And that is certainly going to shift things quite a bit in terms of what we're looking for in this game.

But this was exciting news, maybe surprising news. I was, I was a bit surprised, to be honest, that this was the decision.

We knew that Luca and Marcus Smart, per J.G. Reddick, were going to play in two preseason

games. And that was it. My guess, just as an educated guess, was that Marcus Smart and Luca would play in Wednesday's game.

And fortunately, and we've talked about it ever since the schedule came out,

they have a back-to-back here in preseason,

which would suggest that they're not going to play, obviously, both legs of a back-to-back.

No reason to do that for preseason play.

So my sense was, okay, well,

they'll probably play Wednesday in Las Vegas, what is a Lakers, quote, home game in Vegas

is very much a Lakers town. I just mean that's a home game. They're not actually at Crypto.com

arena, but it's also nationally televised on ESPN as opposed to tonight's game against the Suns, which is not nationally televised. So just based on that, it's okay, they'll probably play Wednesday night. Instead, no, they're going to play tonight against the Phoenix Suns. It'll be Luca, Marcus Smart. And if you saw the comment there from JJ Reddick, Austin Reeves will also play. Remember, he got a little banged up in their last game.

Their win on Sunday against the Golden State Warriors had Brandon Pajemski put a knee into his

calf area and Austin went out of that game. But he will play. So we do get Luca, we do get Marcus

smart tonight. I think with this very, very strongly suggests, I don't know if anyone has confirmed it at this point, but I'm just operating as though what's now going to happen is most of the team will sit out tomorrow night's game. I will still be here for the game. We are here for every game. Lakers, it doesn't matter who's playing. I will still be here doing the play by play

and doing a little bit after the game for the post game show, of course. But tomorrow night's

game, I would imagine most of the guys sit for that one. And then Friday will be the final

dress rehearsal for the Lakers against the Sacramento Kings ahead of Tuesdays, next Tuesday,

a week from today, regular season opener

against the Golden State Warriors.

...