Hour 1 - Crumbling

“The Lakers had an inferno. It was an arson that took place so good. It was so great.”

That is how Ben Maller opened his Monday show, relishing the collapse of the Los Angeles Lakers with a week left in the NBA regular season. The roster crumbled in a single game against Oklahoma City: Luka Dončić’s hamstring went “whammy,” Austin Reaves went down, and suddenly the Lakers were left with a skeleton crew. They followed that up by losing to the Dallas Mavericks — the worst Mavericks team in a generation, a team that had lost fourteen straight at home — ending that streak and handing the Lakers a humiliation that Maller called a “blessing in disguise.” The episode then pivoted to two other NBA stories that, taken together, point to a league-wide shift: Joel Embiid and Giannis Antetokounmpo both publicly calling out their own teams for refusing to let them play.

The Lakers’ built-in excuse

Maller argued that the Lakers were never a championship team, even when healthy. The injuries to Dončić and Reaves, combined with the team’s broader weaknesses, mean the Lakers now have the ultimate “get out of jail free card.” If they lose early in the playoffs — or miss them entirely — they can blame the injuries. “Yeah, but if Luka and Austin Reeves were there, we would have won,” Maller mocked. “You’re not hoisting anything. Maybe boogers out of your nose.”