Will Anthony Davis’ injury actually impact this Lakers season outcome?

The NBA has mercifully entered a nice long All Star Weekend, and it honestly couldn’t have come at a better time for the Los Angeles Lakers specifically. Anthony Davis is going to miss at least four weeks, LeBron James is going to have to put his already worn down body through more time at center, and frankly, fans just need a break. It’s been a long year.

To set the scene for that extended vacation, Aaron and used this week’s episode of “The Hook” to look back on the season that’s been to this point in order to argue that while Davis’ injury is certainly a bummer and we both obviously hope for a quick and full recovery, the more you think about it, this next month without him likely isn’t changing much in terms of the direction this season was heading.

Aaron argued from the standpoint of looking around the standings and noting that the teams below the Lakers would have to vastly outplay what they’ve done to this point in order to catch the purple and gold — who in turn were unlikely to catch the Clippers and Minnesota Timberwolves.

I agreed with the central point here, but look at it differently. The writing has been on the wall for a while. This season has been damned for quite some time, and it likely wasn’t getting salvaged. Hell, the Lakers essentially told us this with their deadline inaction. So again, while it sucks to lose AD and any chance of him, Russell Westbrook and LeBron James getting on the same page, it probably wasn’t going to happen in the next month and change anyway.

From there, we segued to Jayson Tatum making news by pointing out the obvious: The media should play no role whatsoever in player bonuses. It’s a clear conflict of interest that leads to some incredibly sticky and borderline unethical situations.

Finally, we finished on Aaron’s best All Star Weekend story, and hoo boy is it a dandy.

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.

And for a short-form recap pod, check out Lakers Lowdown, in which Anthony Irwin recaps the previous day’s news and gets you ready for the day ahead in LakerLand, every weekday morning on the Silver Screen & Roll Podcast feed.