James Go ahead.

It's four three in the win.

Oh, it's got it.

2020 NBA championship belongs to the Los Angeles Lakers.

Hello me, coffee, coffee, love me, love me, love me, go.

Hello.

Lakers Nation.

Podcast.

I'm Trevor Lane here for the Lakers Nation.com. The Lakers have already embarked upon their preseason action. And we're seeing some really exciting stuff. At this point, they are winless in preseason play. But we're seeing much better performances out of a number of players, including guys like Kendrick Nunn, who we didn't see last season. So we've got a lot to break down so far out of two preseason games for the Lakers.

Joining me, we've got Alan Sleeway from ESPN and Daniel Starkand from Lakersnation.com. Guys, how you doing? What's going on, guys? This is, so, Wynn Hotel, you guys aren't messing around anymore. I mean, there's no messing around here. this is as nice of a studio that I've ever been in.

This is fantastic.

So appreciate you having me on, Trev.

And that means a lot for a guy who spends most of his time in ESPN studios. Yes. Maybe I just took a shot at ESPN directly. I did not mean that. I would like my paycheck still every two weeks. But this is a beautiful studio, awesome studio. We are always glad to come here to the wind and be able to record here at Blue Wire Studios. Daniel, great to get in here and have you have been talking a little bit of Lakers. And I thought, you know, going to the game last night, we saw a pretty fun and exciting game, even if the end result wasn't what we were looking for. Definitely. I mean, I feel like the energy in the building, it didn't really feel like a preseason game.

Obviously, Laker fans love coming out to Las Vegas. It was a packed house. LeBron gave us a show in the first half. But yeah, like you were saying earlier, there's a lot of like individual positives to take away. I know it's early in the preseason. A brand new group. It's a working process. But I liked what I saw specifically in the first half. And hopefully they could, you know, keep building on it. Alan, one of the things that I've noticed with this Lakers team so far. And again, it's a tiny sample size of just two games. So we don't want to get ahead of ourselves here. But it, this feels, maybe it's an oversimplification. This feels like a basketball team. Like this feels like an actual basketball team that's going out there and competing to win games. And I don't feel like we saw that for large chunks of the season last time around. So it's a big difference. So I know, I know that sounds funny when you say it. Yeah. I even tweeted out yesterday something like, okay, I know it's preseason. I don't want to make it sound like I'm changing predictions and all that stuff. They do look like they're playing basketball. And they do look like they're competitive. And they do look like there is a purpose. And they do look like they're playing for each other,

and they do look like Darvinham definitely hasn't motivated. Granted, it's in preseason, right? Like the date was yesterday, October 5th, today's October 6th. No one's winning a championship in October. However, that's encouraging. You know, and I think, you know, you could get excited if you're a Laker fan coming off last season and just thinking about how awful that season went.

And think about how there was never a moment where you kind of felt optimistic.

There are actually plenty of moments you were incredibly disappointed just by effort.

I don't think they're going to have that same problem with Darbinham, but it's really, really tough to, you know, obviously to assess a team when the games don't matter and when you're in your honeymoon stage, which they are right now with Darbinham. They'll face some adversity down the road. They'll be in situations where it's back to back in Denver and Utah and things don't go their way. That's where we'll obviously get a gauge of who this team is.

Yeah, absolutely.

It's way too early to declare mission accomplished or anything like that.

But so far, this is what you would essentially hope to see from a team led by

Darwin,

...