Andrew Schlecht

And so like their focus has to be on getting these guys healthy.

We've seen Luca, you know, get to the finals.

with being the lower seed before.

They shouldn't be afraid of that.

What they should be afraid of is getting to the playoffs and having Luka at 60%, and then you're not winning a first-round series anyways.

Yeah, I think that like point of attack defense is just a problem for the Lakers on both sides of the basketball.

And when you have a guy like Shea, Jake Moravia has done a good job with what he's been asked to do with the skill level that he's at.

But he had nothing for Shea tonight.

And I'm not even sure that Marcus Smart would have anything for Shea either, you know, to be clear.

So I do think like that's going to be an issue for them.

The Thunder were able to get into the paint whenever they wanted.

They could get a paint touch with J-Dub.

They could get a paint touch with Shea.

They could get a paint touch with even Jared McCain and AJ Mitchell.

All those guys were getting wherever they wanted all night.

And that's a huge problem.

And then Aiton, too.

Both these guys, Smart and Aiton,

are kind of they're supposed to be like the fulcrum to the defense it's just really hard to rely on like those two guys they weren't supposed to be that and now they're kind of being counted on to do that and then when you're playing like these super elite teams it's hard to level it's really really hard to level up um so yeah it's it's gonna be an uphill battle

for the Lakers they're just going to have to be absolutely surgical with Luca LeBron and Austin Reeves offensively and like those guys outscoring everybody else is gonna I mean that's how they're gonna win games and they they did that throughout the entire month of March it's like we have evidence that they can do it now it's like can they do it in the playoffs and can they do it consistently against great teams is something that they need to answer