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“LUKA & LAKERS”
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An amazing week in the NBA, the outpouring of love, accolades, inviting everybody to order their NBA Finals tickets because the Lakers are going to be there.

All this in the aftermath of the Lakers-Mavericks trade that imported Luka Doncic to the Lakers, and shipped Anthony Davis to Dallas.

Doncic has rallied from a slow start and from his calf injury, to put together impressive back to back games.

AD showed up, put up big numbers in his first game and then went down with a significant abdominal injury.

Dallas is left with a rag-tag roster, with Kyrie Irving, 3-injured bigs, and no Doncic.  That trade may haunt them for eternity.

A bit early though to award the Lakers the NBA Western Conference title or make plans for the NBA finals.

Doncic is pushing hard to put away his reputation of being lazy, fat, and refusing to commit to playing defense. or conditioning himself.

He’s offended at how he was painted by people around the Mavericks organization and the rationale to not offer him a ‘max’ contract when he became eligible.

Interesting too, the statement ‘Luka’ is now in beast mode after all the insults.  Interesting he had to get motivated to earn the 50M per year he was getting in Dallas and is in LA.

As for the Lakers, yes they blew out a battered Mavericks team on Tuesday, after trashing a once good Denver team, which is lost in the Rockies with a (10-14) record against good teams this year.  Denver let so many veteran players go in the off season they wrecked their team chemistry.

And while the national media keeps saying the Lakers are ready for the run, they are ignoring the awful losses to lowly Utah and Charlotte, sandwiched around the All Star break.  And that same group of smart guy network people, are not paying attention as to who is left on the Lakers schedule, alot of the NBA’s best teams.

Can the Lakers carry thru on the excitement of Luka-LeBron and Austin Reaves?  Can they survive without legitimate NBA centers, and a really thin bench?

That’s why you play out the rest of the schedule.  We’ll see how long LeBron holds up to the minutes being played.  How long Luka can play at this pace with the hope the calf does not act up.  And if these guys in the paint can be more than just a mirage.

You cannot take away their (35-21) record at this hour.  But they still have something to prove over the long haul for all the reasons I gave you.

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