The Lakers might have three of the biggest steals of the summer 🤫

Matisse Thybulle and Ziaire Williams are BOTH on minimum deals, but the value they’re bringing to this team are WAY bigger than their contracts suggest. 💯 Plus Cam Carr at the draft position we stole him, our front office was cooking.

Thybulle and Williams both made plays on both ends of the floor and will be HUGE keys to our success this season 🙏

To all the haters’ rhetoric:

“Lakers won’t win more than 30 games this season”. We’re 10% there already.

“Lakers have only beat trash teams”
Proves we’re not one of them.

There’s always some simple brained rebuttal but let our record, our leader Luka, and our coaching, and play making speak for itself. Top 3 seed this year with an essentially new team where AR is our most tenured player. LFG! So excited to continue watching and supporting our Purple and Gold!

Continue being realistic: we need to get rid of Looney Tunes and find at minimum a decent backup big. There’s just no one on the market worth pursuing at the moment that I see but if we can solve that, we are true contenders this season and the next few seasons.

He showed respect and class to us when our guys were down. Even though OKC fans had zero compassion for Luka and AR, lets show class.

It seems personal now between JJ and Vando. Adou has been out every game, Jake missed last game, Looney is a disaster in his 5 minutes every game, and we just got killed on the boards by Utah with them exposing our lack of size and physicality at forward and center. Kessler has an off game and we literally have nobody. Still not a single Vando minute across the first three games.

It’s getting to the point where I think JJ has to swallow his pride and play Vando here and there. Some matchups may not be for Vando, but you’re telling me he deserves 0 minutes when JJ can barely field a big man rotation? It’s getting ridiculous

A few things surprised me, but overall it matches the eye test. This is a cohesive roster whose players mostly fit the main guys.

Jake on the top of the list when paired to each player of the top 3 players isn't really a big surprise, the team seens to always make a run when he is on the floor since the preseason. He failed to hit his shots tonight, but his impact was huge again.

Matisse above Ziaire, Grimes and Mamu when paired to each of the top guys somewhat surprised me, his playmaking on defense is clearly impacting the results. The most important here is that every rotation forward has been clicking with the main guys.

I'm not going to judge Sexton since it is only his 2nd game after missing the preseason and he has been sharing the floor with Looney impacting his numbers. By the way Looney by himself is impacting the numbers of most players coming of the bench, the same happens to Grimes and Mamu.

The only clear need is really a good backup C that fits the main guys, Looney minutes has been brutal, he has been absolutely unplayable outside garbage time. The starting four hole has been filled with a great deal of success by the combinations of the players we have available.

The eventual development of Carr and Adou have potential to make this a really, really deep roster.

I hate to get hyperbolic but watching Luka has me feeling like a kid watching Kobe again. Absolute killer on the court. How lucky are we as fans to got to witness Kobe then Bron now Luka Magic 🙏🙏🙏

With the Jazz sending 2, sometimes even 3 bodies in the paint to ensure that Kessler does not get a lob dunk, put back or rebound, it created 14 wide open 3s for Ziaire and Matisse, who were exceptional shooting the ball tonight.

While I do think Kessler could have done a bit more on the offensive and defensive glass, getting bear hugged by 2 big men on your first game in your old city isn't always easy.

#1 being Kobe's 81 against the Raptors and #2 being Baylor's game where he scored 64 with 8 assists to go along with it against the Celtics.

It's really impressive Luka managed to get 27 through his assists. Anyone know the Laker's record for that? I'm guessing it'd be Magic who holds it.

We have been so spoiled by the Stu and Bill combo that the drop in quality with Danny, is just so apparent. Hopefully they can come up with a better replacement by the time Stu officially hangs it up, because I don’t wanna deal with Danny for long.

Luka’s defense and rotations were really bad early. I think the first 12 points scored by the Jazz were basically Luka falling asleep on defense or forgetting to box out his man. (But this also proves that letting LeBron go was definitely the right decision. LeBron has started off slow defensively too, and having both of them together would only compound the issue.)
Thybulle is really playing at an elite 3&D level. As I predicted, he’s better than Smart. He provides the same level of defense with longer reach, better shooting so far, and none of the boneheaded plays.
We have a lot of good rotation players this year who are hungry on the court. Jake, Mamu, Grimes, Sexton, and Ziaire. I think Carr will get around 10 minutes a game too when he’s back. These guys are playing with maximum effort and intensity. A lot of dogs on this team, and Jake seems to have leveled up his game defensively.
The Jazz’s plan of doubling Kessler without the ball was just the stupidest game plan I’ve ever seen…
Reaves needs to stick to quick and efficient moves. Whenever I see Reaves trying fancy dribbles, attempting to become Iverson with the crossovers, or dribbling into heavy traffic, it’s almost a guaranteed turnover. He’s also risking his body when he goes flailing into multiple big guys in the paint.
He played excellent basketball tonight, but to take his game to the next level against elite competition, he needs to cut out those inefficient moves.

The rebounding was really bad tonight. I’m not sure if we can fix it or if it’s just a personnel problem, but we definitely need to put more emphasis on boxing out. And yes, we need a backup center too.
I think we’re one or two moves away from being an extremely deep team. If we can get a backup center and turn some of our dead weight (Vando, James, Hardy) into another legitimate rotation piece, I believe we’d be very, very deep.
I’d trade Thiero too if we could get a rotation piece back. I honestly don’t think Thiero will have a great career despite his raw potential. His movements are too forceful, and the way he lands just looks injury-prone. I feel like that’s going to be very hard to fix at this point.

Thank you Luka! You are the man, you have Laker DNA all over. Making Laker basketball exciting and fun to watch. Can’t wait to see ya win NBA MVP and a championship with the Lakers soon….. god bless ya and give you good health you the man!

Just watched the replay of the game against the Jazz with the Jazz's own commentary team.. It's always satisfying to hear an opposing broadcast team feel worried and frustrated while their team is getting torched 😅