What do you think about the Laker team now?

You follow the box scores of the games every day?

Just the Lakers.

You're kidding.

That is really a compliment.

I was pleased to see you smile at the top part show because once the game starts, you have a game face.

You don't smile much out there.

I don't think you have to do things for money anymore. Correct. What's up, Laker fans? Welcome to the Laker Film Room podcast. I'm Pete, joined by Darius. And last night, Lakers got blown out by O KC with the skeleton crew, no Luka in Austin, of course, but also no LeBron, no Marcus, Jackson Hayes was a late scratch. But the first quarter and a half or so, Lakers, it was more entertaining, certainly, than the last time we played OKC, the first quarter and a half. But then by the end of the second quarter, you know, OKC had opened it up to 18 in the blink of an eye, and then it was 40 in the third quarter or close to it, and that was that as expected.

But the most eventful parts of the night, Dee, were a couple of benchings.

And in yesterday's pod, I thought you made an astute observation about how JJ Reddick

becomes much more centered with Luca and Austin out and sort of your coach wrangling together,

whatever the new thing is going to be and how we need to play and get things

together on a very short timeline is super important. And that game, obviously coming off of a blowout

two games before that to OKC without the stars and without Jackson and all of that, I noticed in that

game, D.A., Rui, and Vando all had sort of a lower

level of intensity, sort of the hand me the blindfold and cigarette. We know how this is going to

go, especially without our main guys. Whereas the Lakers got a lot of South Bay guys and

into the bench guys who came into that game and were like, hell yeah, Drew Timmy's getting a start.

He comes out and plays hard. This is like an important game in their career.

And so two minutes and 27 seconds into the game, Reddick benches Rui and puts Thero into the game.

And then end of the first quarter, Shea has one of the funnier fouls of the season as Vando foulbates him on a three, draws three free throws. Then he misses all three free throws, gets the golden sombrero for that, going to the end of the first quarter. Lakers run one play. Kobe Buffkin misses a floater, ball gets knocked out of bounds. Lakers keep the ball. There's nothing that happens in that play from watching it where I'm like, oh, Vando, you really screwed that up.

But Lakers keep the ball. There's nothing that happens in that play from watching it where I'm like, oh, Vando, you really screwed that up. But Lakers call a timeout, which is very unusual, 15 seconds into a quarter. Vando gets benched and Vando, as we saw, you know, steps up to Reddick, like, what the hell, right? Like, what's going on here? And Reddick says something. we don't know the specifics, walks away, then we hear in the postgame afterward,

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