Hello, Lakers Nation. Welcome in to the Lakers Nation.com podcast. I'm Trevor Lane, and it's game day. Lakers Wolves tonight, 530 p.m. Pacific time. It's game one. The playoffs are here. Let's go. Come hang out with me tonight live on the Lakersnation.com YouTube channel, YouTube.com slash Lakers Nation or over on playback.com slash Lakers Nation.

During the game, we'll have the play-by-play, our live reaction, and then afterwards the live postgame show on YouTube.com slash Lakers Nation. Joining me on the show today to help get us ready to go. It's my guy, Donnie Freeman. Donnie, happy to have you on the show today. How are you doing? Doing pretty good, happy to be here.

You know, I typically I'm on with you on the show today. How are you doing? Doing pretty good.

Happy to be here. You know, I typically am on with you after the fact or, you know, and other things. So it was the first time I heard the game day. You know, I see what they be talking about. They get all excited about it. I felt a little bit of jolt down my spine when you said that. just wait for this. Wait for this. You come hang out with us tonight.

It's like a party. That's the other one that people love. It's like a party. And it's a lot of fun. And I hope we get a fun game tonight. You know, Donnie, you and I have talked a lot just off air about this series, about this game and what we expect to see from the Lakers and all that.

And I thought I got to get Donnie on the show to talk about some of this stuff. So let's just dive right into it. Obviously, we've had some time to kind of digest that it's going to be Lakers Wolves, that this is going to be the matchup and getting into some of the nitty gritty. But what's the first thing you're going to be watching for once tonight's game goes live? Yeah, I'm going to be watching which coach has is the first

one to make an adjustment midgame. Like who's like, all right, I can't leave this guy out here. I got to

maybe switch things up. Are we going to see an extended run from Jacks? He's been kind of getting

a really short leash lately. Is JJ going to try to combat size with size? He typically likes to zig where they

zag. I don't know if that'll be the case or not. And I'm also from the Timberwolf side looking at Conley.

Conley is interesting because I think he's a target for our guys on the defensive side. We can go at him a good bit.

And also, I think that when you get past Randall, who I believe led this team and assists per game,

Conley is other than Ant, of course, their next best playmaker or one of their best playmakers.

So this team doesn't have a ton of aggregate playmaking. So if you could try to play Conley off the floor,

then maybe that's something. So we were could try to play Conley off the floor, then maybe that's

something. So we're talking about Mike Conley, older player, he can be deadly as a spot of three

point shooter. He is not a guy that you can leave, but is certainly somebody that as an older

player, most guys are not like LeBron where they're still playing at an extremely high level. He's somebody that can be perhaps picked on on the defensive side of the ball. When we're talking about the initial defensive matchups, is it just, is it Jackson Hayes on Gobert? Like how? Because we've seen, we've also seen like against Yokin, she gets, I believe they did against Zubots as well, where it was Rui that drew the initial assignment,

and then Hayes was kind of a romer in center field.

I agree with you that the Jackson Hayes minutes are not going to last long to start the game. But while he's out there, what do you expect those matchups to be? Yeah, I'm not really sure. Jackson is kind of a weird one because he's not big enough. like he still would get pushed under the basket if he's on Gobert, for example.

Like, Jacks is better in like a switching scheme or you can put him on a wing or something like that a little bit. And oftentimes, JJ would do Rui or even LeBron on the big centers, like versus cat, things like that throughout the game a good bit or DFS, of course. Really, I'm not quite sure. He probably goes with something like that, maybe even LeBron, just because LeBron could potentially roam a bit more. I'm not really sure with that. But the question is more so like who you're putting on Randall, because I think Rui will take that assignment. So that's more or less, once you take, you know, Randall, then it looks like, okay well jacks is going to have to guard gobert probably right so but he's not going to play more

than 15 minutes so that's more or less once you take, you know, Randall, then it looks like, okay, well, Jacks is going to have to guard Gobert, probably, right? So, but he's not going to play more

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