Ziaire Williams

The defense is paying more attention to him and how much more difficult that is.

Well, the inverse is happening with these Lakers by they're now now getting the benefit of what Rui had last year, which is you're going to get all these open looks because teams are going to live with Matisse Dybul shooting a three or Zaire Williams shooting a three rather than.

Luca in the paint getting a shot, hitting the little 15-footer, whatever he's got, getting to the rim, or Walker Kessler getting a lob.

They're going to pick their poison.

They're going to say, look, we're going to leave Matisse.

We're going to leave Zaire.

So I think that this is, to a degree, they're just that good of shooters, but it's also you've got good shooters who are getting the best looks they have ever seen in their careers, and right now they're feasting on that.

The Lakers are doing a great job generating those, and what I love, the element of it that I really love is the pick your poison aspect aspect of this that teams are having to face because it's do you want luca to score on you because he absolutely can do you want walker to be at the at the rim rolling and getting that lob and if not we've got these guys out of the perimeter that we can drive and kick to i did think they were missing the cross-court skip pass a little bit especially early in the game and that's where utah had some success but those threes have been absolutely wide open and that's what's exciting about this lakers offense is that they've got so many different weapons That can absolutely burn you.

OKC was the team that I thought was most impressive around the league through the first week, and they certainly had their sights set on another title.

And so before we kind of get into Matisse and Zaire a little bit later, got a game against Portland tonight.

Come join me on Offside for that.

I wanted to talk to you about that, Dee, about...

It's one week.

It doesn't mean a whole ton of things, but it enforces my point of you never know in the NBA and figuring out where the Lakers can make these little improvements is so important.

And a lot of it does start with those two guys that you mentioned with Matisse and Zaire and them getting value out of those guys and kind of seeing how they fit and even seeing their fit together in the starting lineup.

I think there are bigger challenges ahead for sure, but...

No dip threes.

We're looking at Zaire Williams relocation threes, like corner to the top of the key.

I'm going to find my way.

I'm going to get it done.

We're going to put defense around, not just Luca, but Luca and Austin Reeves.

And so, okay, we got Walker inside.

We got Matisse and Zaire Williams flying around.

We're going to figure out the rest and make it happen.

will say that these the 2025 draft class it is tough right now right now it's tough because I think they more or less showed restraint, right? You know more than me about were they in on Giannis? Did they envision a big trade this summer? I didn't think they were in the position to go for it, and they didn't, and that's fine.

If the young players, if the young talent eval, and that includes like Noah and, you know, even guys like Zaire, who is now no longer here, and Dayron, right? And hey, I like Minot.

But it's just, hey, as my boy David Jacoby shouted me out on the mismatch pod, Verno was saying, like, what are they? And I just think that if they're going to be bad this year, then like really bad and again remains to be seen then they really have to answer that question of like if you know these some of the sophomores are straight up out of the rotation and you trade mpj and you trade them for assets they have to have some really uncomfortable conversations about what this young talent pool looks like and what that means.

And if the goal really was to be feisty and competitive, why... have to evaluate those moves on that basis so like yeah mo wagner's a great locker room guy or whatever and like yeah i like keon and um randall and you know whatever you get out of mpj this year but if you don't even achieve that level of goodness and you didn't invest that much that's also like you have to ask tough questions about why that is and what your talent eval on like those margins are and like you're pro scouting.

It's small sample size, of course, but we're getting a sense of what this team can be on the offensive end of the floor.

Matisse, Dybul, Zaire, Williams, Mamou, they're all hitting threes.

Luka's creating things in the paint.

Austin is insanely efficient.

that I expect we're going to see a little bit more of that.

We'll see it tonight against the Blazers as they're going to try to do everything to keep Kessler off the boards, keep Kessler from getting opportunities, and then rely on everybody else in order to out-rebound the Lakers players.

Trust that they have advantages at the other positions against guys like Zaire, like Luka, like Matisse, Austin, try to out-rebound those guys.

So I do think we're going to see more teams try to deploy players a similar strategy, maybe not to the same degree with the desperation that the Jazz were trying to keep Walker Kessler from getting the ball.

It's nice to know that the center position is something that we've been looking for for a long time and we got.

And for me, the two guys I'm really, really excited about are, you know, Mathis Tybal and Zaire.

Yeah.

Those guys, you know, they're playing defense.

But yeah, I think this is going to be a pretty tough spot for Denny going up against Ty Bull.

And even Zaire Williams has been pretty solid defensively.

But with all that being said, on a four-game slate, I'm not really going to be fading him for that reason, just because he does have a pretty solid four, and it's only 7.8K with small forward, power forward eligibility.

But I think I'm a little bit under on his projection tonight.

Klingin's not going to really be pulling him away from the basket, so I think that there is a shot for him to have... you know five to six blocks and we saw what that looks like game two he had 54 dk points um see i think he's for sure in play these fringe guys though i think aren't great you're probably going to be getting them just because optos are going to be looking for these cheaper options but I think I'm most interested in Tybill once again at 3.8K, just starting, playing mid to upper 20s minutes, a guy that can fill it up at times.

I think that he looks really good.

Zaire has been given a pretty long leash in the starting unit as well.

I think the starters are the two guys I'm most interested in.

a letter like on for the front page and Arturo's gonna like this this is the most Lucha thing that he's ever done and he's doing it in the right city in LA we are a Lucha city declaring that he's gonna bring us a championship and like he had so there was so many haters so many like uh you know LeBron ball swingers that were saying like hey Lakers are gonna Luka's not gonna be anything with that the Lakers aren't gonna be anything but like You look at the numbers that Kessler, Luca, Austin are all putting up.

And, you know, Zaire, we were talking about this on, like, the preview about Zaire really stepping up in the defensive place.

And I saw it over these last three games.

You know, we're 3-0 right now.