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 bar 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 Filmroom podcast, brought to by the Blue Rour podcast Network. I'm Pete, joined by Darius and Mike. And today we're going to talk defense. One of the biggest storylines to me this year has been the changes that the Lakers have been going through on the defensive end of the floor.

Now, we all know that Frank Vogel is a defensive coach, but there's been a mismatch between his coaching philosophies and the personnel on this team, at least in my estimation.

And Vogel has always thrived on coaching teams that were big across the board.

Those Indiana teams would put out

lineups where not only did you have that big rim protector in Roy Hibbert, but your perimeter

defenders all had seven foot wingspans, Paul George, Lance Stevenson, George Hill, just arms

everywhere and physicality. And the last two seasons with the Lakers, we've had teams that were

really big across the board. And we were the best defense in the league during that span.

So his defensive system is ideal for those types of players, big physical players with

high defensive IQs and motors. And most of this roster, this year's Lakers team, is comprised of smaller,

faster players that don't read situations as quickly and have inconsistent motors. And in many

ways, that's just a straight up roster issue. Vogel could do everything correctly from his

perspective, and we could still never reach the caliber of defense that we played the last two seasons.

But I think the idea of this team was to be competent enough on that end while really being an elite offense,

which we haven't been and we'll go down that rabbit hole on one of these pods.

...