Hello, welcome to the hook collective podcast. We talk about the NBA, which we're doing on Sunday evening joining me from Austin, Texas is Kirk Goldsbury. Hello, Kirk.

Hello, Brian. It's good to see you. How are you doing tonight?

Good. Thank you. We're back in the flow of things after a little bit of an off schedule last week. Hope you guys enjoyed our pods. I did a podcast across over podcast with CJ McCollum Kirk and within 12 hours he was on the health and safety protocols.

Well, hopefully we was a remote podcast, Brian and your safe and sound there. It was remote. I feel great, but yet again, the curse on my pod continues and we'll be talking about the Indiana Pacers on this podcast. That's right. I'm saying it right up front and they lost by 14 points already today.

So good luck to anybody who we discuss first up the Los Angeles Lake. They're on this pod. You know how much I love talking about them, but they've won five out of six games.

They may have gotten back to 7 and 11, which you know not long ago before this stretch, they were two in 10 buried two in 10. They've dealt with injuries to LeBron and they missed Anthony Davis with an injury on Saturday night.

Kirk, did you see Anthony Davis nearly severely hurt himself trying to help LeBron up on Friday night in San Antonio?

It was it was a scary moment and it was like a classic Anthony Davis moment. It was a scary. It was scary. Anybody anybody that's scary moment. It didn't look good.

But yeah, what can you say about that?

So LeBron was on the court. Anthony Davis wanted to reach up to help pull him up like you see 50 times a night and he slipped. I maybe the floor was wet. I don't know. He slipped and he crashed to the floor.

And LeBron rolled over. He just looked at him and like in that moment.

And he said it was an accident. It slipped and fell, but like AD like screamed in pain. And LeBron looked at him like you got to be kid. I got I'm not saying he was saying that to Anthony. I think he was just like you got to be kidding me.

Like what just happened.

And he missed the next game that is said that he got kicked in this calf.

So we'll take that. He could have heard his calf on that play. He fell on the ground. But anyway, the point is LeBron missed five games in that stretch. And they still were winning AD put up some incredible numbers which we'll talk about in a minute.

But Kirk, the schedule. Yeah, like I want to I want to acknowledge that like as you're playing better because we pounded them when they are playing poorly. The schedule was extremely favorable, but they won that so

what is your evaluation as you look at the Lakers at 7 11 going into a game Monday night at home against the Pacers.

Kind of said it might take us in a nutshell. They're the hottest team in the G league right now. If you look at their lives. If you and I could say this at the expense of my beloved San Antonio Spurs. So yes, the Lakers of one five of their last six games. That's good. I mean, they needed this. They're 7 and 11 now. That's good. You can't complain. All jokes aside.

They started to score the ball, but you also can't ignore the fact that three of those wins came against the Spurs who are arguably the worst defense and the worst offense in the NBA right now.

And then additional win came against the pistons who have the worst record in the Eastern Conference. So yes, two things. They won five of their last six, but also Brian and one five of the last 11.

If we're splitting it up before Anthony missed that game, he was playing the best basketball we've seen from him all year. And he's the guy in his prime right now.

He's always been the one that a lot of us appointed to for this season be like, it's your turn, dude. You need to step it up.

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