Podcast: How long will the Andre Drummond experiment last?

On today’s episode of our brand new podcast “Lakers Lounge,” Harrison Faigen joined me to talk about the Lakers’ thrilling win over the Golden State Warriors for some unknown amount of marbles.

Seeing as the conversation might get a little touchy when the focus centers on, well, centers, we start with a lighthearted look at the titles associated with the NBA’s play-in tournament. Given the type of stage the NBA is associating with the event, they should maybe be a little clearer on the actual stakes. Just a thought.

But all right, enough messing around. Look, the Lakers have a bit of a centers problem. Sure, Harrison wrote the opposite of that a little while back, but he’s often wrong, so we should be used to that by now.

The issue isn’t so much that they have no centers who can stay on a court in a playoff setting. No, it’s that the centers who can would either rather not play the position (Anthony Davis), or seemingly find themselves in Frank Vogel’s dog house for some unknown reason (Marc Gasol), while the centers who can’t sustainably stay on the floor (Andre Drummond) are given longer leashes than perhaps they should because of, well, reasons.

While this issue didn’t completely bite the Lakers last night, it very well might against better teams the longer they get into the postseason. Maybe matchups will make a lot of this moot, as Anthony Davis said, but the Lakers should also maybe consider how difficult a matchup they are when they just, you know, play their best players.

Wild concept, I know.

Once Harrison and I finished yelling at each other about games that have already happened, we turned our attention the to series immediately facing the Lakers, starting on Sunday. Despite being the seven-seed facing a team with the second-best record in the Western Conference, the Lakers are heavy betting favorites, with almost no one being surprised by those odds.

We wrapped up the show by discussing how the Lakers match up with the Suns and whether we maintain the same level of confidence in them that oddsmakers have heading in.

You can listen to the full episode below, and to make sure you never miss a show, subscribe to the Silver Screen and Roll podcast feed on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher or Google Podcasts.

You can follow your Harrison and myself on Twitter @hmfaigen and @AnthonyIrwinLA.