PART 1: Luka Doncic can win MVP; Here's how

0:00Oh boy, he always seems to get involved. I'm telling you, too many coconuts are hitting him right on top of the skull. I think Anthony will be a great acquisition. I think he can do it all. Every who shows this. And we're live. Welcome everybody here to the Lakers Lounge podcast. I'm Anthony here when senior Lakers insiders, as well as lead Lakers content creator, foreoffside, joined on this fine Tuesday afternoon by Harrison Fagan, he of SB Nation. Again, getting used to this zero intro, like approach to the show so that little gap right

1:04before I'm going to try to eliminate that. But aside from that, you know, I'm kind of excited. I like not getting a note from YouTube saying that my show can't be monetized. That was great. So I think we're going to stick with this. But other than that, Harrison, how are you doing coming off of this long holiday weekend? Pretty good. I went on a boat yesterday. Didn't get injured. So, you know, that was sort of against all odds. I thought, you know, I thought I would jack down. I'm Brian. Huh? No, it was a real boat. It was a, it was a duffy boat in Newport Beach. And my only goal for the day was like, don't come in here with a new injury story to tell Anthony about like how I reenacted the Brian Windhorse. I fell between the boat and the dock and broke my rib. Like that was like, I was like, I, when he told that story again, I like Brian. When he told that story, I laughed so hard that I was like, it's going to be karma for

2:05me that this is going to happen. And so I was very careful getting on and off of that boat. I haven't heard that story from Brian. I have. He told it on the show. He was telling it on one of the pots where they were like, they were like, why are you in so much pain, Wendy? And he's like, well, I was stepping on to a boat. Just recently, it was like the last year or so. Bonter. I'm in it. I'm going to text and see if I can get that, get that story from him. Yeah. But no, I was running a victory lap on not having that happen to me. Not doing that. Yeah. I'm now going to get hit by a car when I go for a walk tonight for victory, laughing this. Or you're going to be falling, you're going to fall getting into your car. That'll be that'll be how it goes. That's it and the show. So I've had quite a few listeners and viewers recognize that I can be, I kind of lean pessimistic

3:06when it comes to my analysis of the Lakers. People just not putting them on that. Yeah. Yeah. And I've noticed the listeners that have noticed this trend from you. No, no, I've picked up on it. And so today on the show, what we're going to do, and really we were going to do this last week, right, Harrison? Yeah. This was a podcast. This was an episode concept from last week that we were all ready to do. And then like 30 seconds before we were going to go live, we found out that the clippers were found guilty of cap circumvention. Which by the way, the fallout from that has been tremendous. It's just like certain people and beautiful. Yeah, like certain people, certain accounts just haven't tweeted at all. Not even just about like the clippers thing, but like at all. That's been hilarious. It's been, it's also been kind of funny to see one of the takeaways be, can you believe

4:08the clippers didn't, they didn't tell me separately of everybody else that they were circumventing the cap and they sure hope they don't get caught. That's all. I've been not to just reenact the entire hoop collective archives to start this podcast, but did you listen to their show today when I haven't yet. I haven't. Okay. So McMahon reported, McMahon said he reported that the Lawrence Frank notes were not paper notes. It was like on a computer. He kept computer notes, digitize notes of the crimes that were committing. And then he just turned them over to the NBA. He was like, yeah, I like to cooperate. You got me. So yeah, I found a lot of that very interesting. I made a note in yesterday's episode how crazy it's been that like the Lakers won a championship

5:08after the Anthony Davis trade. And we've gotten more criticism of that acquisition nationally than we've gotten from some outlets. Even after, you know, this has played out the way that it has. So that's been kind of funny to monitor and keep an eye on as well. Maybe if that stuff comes up by way of a comment or a live chat or whatever, Harrison, and I will dive back into that. But today what we're going to do is I'm going to try to be optimistic about the Lakers throughout the entirety of the episode. And we're going to go kind of subject line by subject line and see how long I can last as far as, you know, just maintaining the utmost positivity that one can realistically ask for. And I'm going to do so in a not obviously sarcastic way. You know, I owe you guys at least an attempt at this just to show that I see a world where some of this stuff plays out in a way that the Lakers are hoping.

6:10And I'll get I'll put on my PR hat and I will I will spin whatever potential criticism might exist in the Lakers favor. And and see if you guys enjoy that version of the show more than me just being real and saying, I don't know about this roster. You're really selling it. You're like, I'm going to lie to you for the next hour, but just so you know, I still think this roster sucks. Yeah, I'll be I'll be Clippers employees talking to National NBA insiders. I think I mean, look, as much as you lean pessimistic, I think you are more than capable of seeing the path to like this working out. Like you are able to intellectually conceptualize these things. It's like just because you don't think that something is the most likely outcome doesn't mean that you can't like figure out how it would happen if it was going to. Yeah. Yeah. It's like in golf, right? If you put yourself in a tough spot, you have to visualize yourself hitting the shot that you need to hit to get out of that tough spot.

7:15And you can and you can kind of feel out what that swing would kind of feel like you can you can take a couple practice wings to try to, you know, figure out what that looks like and and and picture it in your head and then hopefully you can execute it. And that's essentially what I'm doing here is I think the Lakers put themselves in a really tough spot. By prolonging building in actual competitive roster. And and I think they've put themselves in a really tough spot by by, you know, trying to basically completely rebuild a roster around only Luca Doncic and around Austin Reeves. And you know, we'll we'll see if they can execute this tough shot. And but like what we're going to do on this episode is kind of outline what that tough shot would look like what this flop shot over a sand trap and under a tree might look like and and and again, try to stay positive.

8:16We're off to a great start here with Anthony Phillips telling me that I need to stop being a Lakers fan. Um, no, not for the next hour after that maybe, but for the next hour, Anthony is putting on the purple and gold face paint. And he is he is rallying the troops out in front of Staples Center. I am, I am we consider crypto.com arena, the, the Alamo for this episode specifically. Um, a question. Before we do the full purple and gold face paint one time, just not and then just not acknowledge it. Just do the whole just sit here with it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. This is how people think I am like non Lakers fans. People think I wear the purple and gold face paint. Lakers fan wearing clippers colors right now. If you pull that shirt up a little bit, it's going to say LA Clippers. Like, it's like hashtag free Lawrence Frank. It's just.

9:16So anyway, yeah, that's how this is going to go. Please hit that like button. Please hit that subscribe button. Hit us with comments in the chat and and and any kind of questions that you have. For the back half of the show, we'll try to answer as many of those towards the tail end as we can up a quick. Kind of warning for how I'm recording this. So Miles had to come home from daycare a little early and he is currently napping and he has been napping for a little while. He came home with a bit of a fever and if he wakes up, I might have to just jump or record the rest of this episode. He gets kind of snugly so he might sit here with me for as long as we have to have him here when we finish the episode, depending on how early he wakes up. So we'll see how that goes. And then yeah, hit that subscribe like all that good stuff today shows brought to you here on YouTube by price picks use that promo code HMA.

10:20And you will get $150 worth of free price picks elections when you sign up use that promo code and win a $5 lineup or or more of your own. Also, please subscribe wherever it is that you get your podcast preferably an Odyssey, but anywhere you get them is perfectly fine by me. And tell your friends about the show. The show is grown a ton over the course of the summer. It would be nice to see that continue on into the season. I have a like tentative goal of 10,000 subscribers before we finish this year or maybe, you know, maybe even the all start break. Depending on how the season goes and hey, depending on how close we get to the best case scenario of the season. All right. So let's go ahead and and start with I'm just going to go in order here Harrison. You know, of the bullet points on the right. And we're going to start with the most important. I think thing that needs to happen for the Lakers to have any chance whatsoever at the kind of season that we're hoping that they have.

11:28And that starts with an ends with, frankly, Luca Doncic, like solidifying himself early, often and throughout the, you know, the seasons MVP conversation. He needs to be in that absolute upper echelon of superstars and the league. That's what the Lakers are banking on. They've built a roster to hopefully make that as easy as that can possibly be. For him. So yeah, like what would you say is the likelihood? What's your confidence level that Luca can perform up at the level that the Lakers desperately need him to play at? Yeah. I mean, for me, this is less of a like if things go right. This is less of a variable to me and more of like a constant where I just like Lucas gun a dominate. Luca when he plays NBA basketball games, Luca dominates them. Like that's just what he does. And that's sort of there's sort of a there's a metronome to that a little bit of like you're going to even when he's fapping out of shape.

12:35Like he is still going to dominate NBA basketball games, especially in the regular season. And so like he's just that good where he's always going to make that sort of impact. And so for me, this is less of like a, you know, like Luca needs to dominate for the Lakers do that. Like obviously yes, that's correct. But I sort of am more like, you know, I think the things that you're going to get to after this. I think are more important swing factors for the Lakers this year because I think that there's a world where Luca dominates and the team still isn't as good as they want to be. But like I sort of feel like that, especially with the Kessler edition and you know, like again, all of this is always there's always the health caveat in the regular season NBA in 2026. And everybody's always getting hurt and stuff like that. But like when Lucas out there, if the roster is out there, if Kessler's out there, like Lucas is going to dominate to me. I don't, I just don't see how that doesn't happen. Yeah, like of the the bullet points listed on the right.

13:35This is the one I am the most confident in. If he stays healthy, he's going to be an MVP candidate. If he and like honestly, my I have a sort of conspiracy theory that like this roster was basically designed to win Luca an MVP award. Like the main goal here is not, you know, they're obviously going to say like title contention, whatever. But like I think the main goal was putting him in the best possible position to really, you know, like lift this team on his shoulders. And the Kessler edition, especially, I mean, that's, that's a good move regardless for winning basketball games, you know, that's not I want to make clear. Those are mutually exclusive things. Yeah, I don't think they added Walker Kessler to prop up Luca stats or something specifically, but it does seem like a big goal of this team is, you know, hey, Lucas the engine, like everything is going to operate off of him now. Like we're not going to have any, you know, that that's honestly the biggest argument for getting rid of LeBron is like there's not going to be any more like how do these guys fit together? Like how does this like how does this work on the court? It's like every piece is a direct complimentary piece to Luca now.

14:42Yeah, except for the fact that they don't necessarily have, you know, the the elite athlete law of threat at the center position that you would like to have. But yeah, I, well, but Jonathan Camingo was supposed to be there. And that just didn't work out. And that's okay. Sometimes you need an offseason to recover from that. So, uh, they did one more one more. I'm staying one more transaction cycles max. No, I'm staying positive. And I'm saying that, you know what, if if a player didn't want to be here, then he didn't like Kobe. Um, so and a do Tiero could be that that law threat. Maybe. And I guess I get up above the rim like he's he's a pretty good athlete in that respect. Um, and as Pete, his dear. I'm remembering I finally did learn how to pronounce his name is zero. Yeah. Yeah. Um, like so far, he's a good player in the hero or theory, you know, that's how I keep remembering. That's how you remember it. Yeah. So I'm staying positive. I am positive that theory will be proven correct. Um, so yeah, I, but like as far as the Luca thing, um, I think it's also like, like him. He's always in that MVP conversation, right?

15:58He's always in it to such an annoying extent that like NBA people talking about Luca don't just is, uh, you know, MVP candidacy often is just really annoying because of the ways that they talk about Lucas game compared to like some of the other candidates or whatever. It does again. I'm not going to say I don't feel like Lucas should have been the MVP last year to be clear. Like that was that would not have been my vote if I had a vote. But like the way that people talk about Luca versus like other candidates through, uh, you know, it's like coach Pete always talks about like a deficit model that people discuss certain things through. I feel like that's the definite and that's not even like a Lakers hate thing. That's like going back to Dallas. People would discuss Luca where it's like it's it's that Gordon Ramsey meme of like him talking to the child chef. And he's like, Oh sweet gorgeous. And like that's them talking about like Yoke's defensive limitations. And then it's like Luca. It's like you idiot sandwich. Like, right. Yeah. Yeah. It's like the like Yoke's like blows a defensive assignment. And it's the like he works at McDonald's. He's, you know, trying to, you know, make progress. He's trying to get back up on his feet and then Luca blows an assignment. It's like, what's this 35 year old working at McDonald's for?

17:14You know, like it's the it's the. No, it's like we get like a think piece about like, oh, wait, did you see what Yoke's did there, though? He's directly conserved that energy. And then you see his 2K energy bar inflate and he's able to get up the court and get the basket back. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, like I, but I, I will say this though as far as like the, the Luca MVP candidacy, like or the season that he needs to have. I'm not just talking because it's like asking him to maintain the statistical production that he had that last month of the season. That's obviously unrealistic. But obviously. Yeah, obviously. Did you see his numbers that last month? That was crazy. What was what was average was the last month? It was it was unbelievable. I'll pull this. I'm just saying I'm not, I'm not going to rule it out. I'm trying to stop the Slovenian death threats from coming in after I expressed Lucas skepticism last episode. So just cut that part.

18:22All right. I'm going to find I'm going to find a split. Let's do this. So see all stats. I'm all in. He could do whatever it was. Let's see. So in March, he played 16 games at 37 minutes a game. Shot 49.2 point 2% from the field on 20 attempts per game. He shot 39% from three point range on almost 13 attempts for game. That's pretty insane. Got to the free throw line and made 83% of his free throws. I think that's actually like a real key identifier for like how well he's playing is a free throw percentage. Average 37.5 points per game. Average seven and a half. I realize it was 37.

19:25Yeah. He every I thought it was like 34 and I was like he could do that. You know, it's like I don't know if that's the best thing for the Lakers or him, but he could probably average 35. Average 37 for the season is probably. Yeah, he went he went for yeah 37.58 and 7.5 as far as like assist rebounds and points or whatever. And yeah, like I don't know if that's necessary. Like that isn't realistic to a point for game is not a realistic expectation. Everything else in there. I feel like he could approximate. Sure. Yeah. But none of that felt that above the norm for me. I mean, he take the threes. It's just a matter of whether or not they go in. Like I'm not the 13 three point attempts was the number that jumped out at me there. Because like, honestly, like I don't he's he's not going to he's going to take that many. It's just well, it's funny because like as I was getting ready to make this point, you have Robo cop eight to nine asking, what's the over under on Luca continuing to argue with the ref constantly. The leaders of Ron and smart are gone. So who's going to call Luca out? Well, nobody really called Luca out last year. Even with the Bronn and Marcus smart.

20:32I feel like smart. I feel like smart actually did sort of hold him accountable a little bit. Maybe. Yeah. If anybody would have kind of guy. Like he just he just like I he'd yell at LeBron. You know, like I don't think it's kind of tough for smart to say much because he also enjoy talking to referees. It was just a very chatty team. Like it was a very like when it came to like it was not a group that I would enjoy refereeing if I was a referee. But last year's what NBA team would you enjoy refereeing? Oh, I feel like there's no good answer to that. They all I mean, they all complain. It's just a matter of degrees. The Sacramento Kings because there is zero chance that I am the worst person on that court at my job. Then anybody involved in that came from the Sacramento Kings perspective. They're like Zach Lovett. Yeah. Chris. He called and you're like, Hey, buddy, maybe you should be worrying about what you're going to do now that player option is exercised.

21:37Okay. Right. Doug Christie like yells at me is like, Doug, do you know what defense they're running? Yeah. But so. But yeah, like, but two Robocops point here as far as the referees thing. One of the the the thing I enjoyed frankly most about that March and it was an incredible 100% yeah that that that that Luca had. But what I enjoyed most about it was he was one tech away from getting suspended. And I know that this sounds like a snide point to make or a snide way to make this point. But he has this like pent up energy in him. Right. And I thought last year, said it on the show said it to you. I think I thought last year, multiple times that we thought this was a huge factor in that run. Yeah. And I thought that that that extra energy that he would allocate towards yelling at the referees would actually more frequently be re funneled into being a more positive and productive teammate.

22:46Whether it's talking to players on defense, whether it's talking, you know, as you're walking towards a huddle or in the huddle and stuff like that. Like he likes to talk, you know, he likes to be a boy. He wants his presence known on a basketball court one way or another. And I would like for us to get to a point this season earlier where that energy is driven in that way. Rather than needing to wait all the way to as he's approaching suspension to approach leadership that way. Bye everyone.