How much will the reported LeBron James-Lakers rift actually matter?

It’s been basically a week and a half since the Los Angeles Lakers last played a basketball game. In that time, the situation around the team and front office has reportedly ranged anywhere from no problem at all to an outright catastrophe.

This week in “The Lakers Lounge,” Harrison Faigen and I started by trying to recap and contextualize everything from the last week-that-feels-more-like-a-month. As per usual, we leaned heavily on what we considered funniest, because if we can’t joke about an organization coming off such a bad offseason that everyone involved feels the need to point fingers before the season is even over, then there’s just nothing we can laugh at anymore.

We also asked an important question: What exactly do any of the recent leaks, headlines and subtweets actually mean moving forward?

Honestly? It’s too early to tell. If the Lakers are able to undo some of last summer’s mistakes and also supplement an aging core, then the only time any of this will come up again is when we look back and laugh at how far the Lakers will have come.

If the Lakers aren’t able to get off of Russell Westbrook’s contract and the unforced error of choosing Talen Horton-Tucker over Alex Caruso (remember, they could have had both) continues to look as bad as it has, though, then All Star Weekend 2022 will likely be an episode in an upcoming “Winning Time” season.

From there, we segued to the rest of this season and out expectations for how we think it’ll go. Harrison and I differ in what we think the team is capable of, but at the end of the day, it’s more a distinction without a difference.

We ended the show by introducing a brand new segment: NFTweets, in which Harrison explains to me why a tweet that I sent might not have gone over as well as I thought it would.

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.