What do you think about the Laker team now?

Do 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 the Lakers play tonight in Milwaukee, third game of a four-game road trip. Still a bit of a mash unit for the Lakers. Dorian Finney Smith will be returning, but Jackson Hayes remains out. I would suspect if he's out on the front end of a back-to-back, he's probably out on the back end too, so likely not to play on this road trip. But, Dee, we're going to shift our focus a little bit today. Been a minute since we talked about the happenings around the league, specifically in the upper echelons of it. As I've said before,

I think this Lakers team is about the fourth best team in the NBA when healthy or close to it,

with OKC, Boston, and Cleveland being the three teams in the tier above them. And yeah, not just

are they above the Lakers, I see them as being the next climb, the next step for this Lakers team. We played Boston the other day. Boston and OKC played last night in a very entertaining game. And so I want to talk a little bit today, Dee, about that, about what is it going to take for the Lakers to get to that next step? And starting with, what do you see when you look at those top teams around the league? So besides those games that you mentioned, Pete, Denver just played OKC on back-to-back

nights in OKC and split with them as well.

OKC is super impressive in a lot of different ways.

They did not have Jalen Williams.

They did not have Alex Caruso.

And I thought they still controlled the tenor of that game.

The thing that stands out to me about OKC, and I think this is also true of Cleveland for sure,

and when completely healthy, I think it's true about Boston as well, is that they can beat you in a variety of different ways, and they've

got different lineup constructions that they can go to as a secondary pitch that feels almost

as strong, if not on some nights, as strong as their top pitch. OKC, now that they have Chetback after he missed a bunch of

time from that bad fall where he had that fracture in his hip, I believe. They've got a credible

too big look and they've got single big looks that are different from each other.

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