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April 30, 2025 12 mins
"Can Luka Doncic silence his critics and lead the Lakers to victory?" This episode of The Ben and Skin Show is a thrilling mix of sports drama and culinary delight. Join hosts Ben Rogers, Jeff “Skin” Wade, Kevin “KT” Turner, and Krystina Ray as they delve into the intense scrutiny facing Luka Doncic. The hosts discuss the harsh comments from basketball analysts Zach Lowe and Kendrick Perkins about Luka's defensive efforts and the controversial trade that brought him to the Lakers. Ben and Skin passionately defend Luka, highlighting his exceptional skills and potential for growth.
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Episode Transcript

Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
It is the Ben and Skin Show ninety seven point
one The Eagle. Thanks for listening to us on a gloomy,
rainy Wednesday. I'll be safe out there now. I mean
also make plans to head out to Rollertown Beer Works
this weekend. That's the brewery up there in Salina, Texas.
Ben and I are partners in for the Big Sinko
pre party going on Friday.

Speaker 2 (00:19):
Now.

Speaker 1 (00:19):
If you're in the Garland area joined me and Ben
at Fortunate Sun Kat, you'll be out there too. We're
gonna be partying with the new USL team that's coming
to the DFW. But you're up north, go to Rollertown
Beer Works. It's the return of Ombre Lobo, our Mexican lagger,
and we have Jazzy's Tacos in the house, Big Lou Mitchellatta's,

(00:40):
we have Oh Uncle Joe's Cookie's gonna be there happy hour,
and of course that delicious Mexican lagger that is so
so good. You'll be drinking it all May long. So
celebrate with your friends Rollertown Beer Works. But right now
it's time for this kill. The thing's big, big, big,

(01:02):
then huge.

Speaker 3 (01:04):
So tonight's Game five of Timberwolves, Lakers, Minnesota three, the
Los Angeles Lukers one. Let's kind of let's play a
clip of audio real quick from Zach Lowe. He used
to be at ESPN, now he's at the Ringer, and
he's kind of going in on Luca.

Speaker 4 (01:21):
Why do you have to get humiliated at the beginning
of every single playoff series before you show the world like, yeah,
I can actually put in a little bit more of
an effort on defense, because if you go back and
you watch game one and two of that Phoenix series,
he is so bad defensively that it's laughable. And then
all of a sudden he becomes passable. And yet again,
here we are, We're four games into this series and

(01:43):
he's just helpless. I've said before, like I wouldn't have
done the trade. Almost no one in the NBA would
have done this specific trade. You can find corners of
smart NBA people, team people who who would tell you
the idea of getting out ahead of this and trading
Luca is not a crazy idea. The idea of doing
it without shopping him to get nine first round draft

(02:05):
picks and swaps and doing this specific trade is where
the logic falls apart. I still think it's a crazy trade,
but I'm just tired of like, I'm gonna be embarrassed
until our backs are against the wall, and then I'm
going to show you that, Yeah, I can put up
a little bit of a fun how about you put
up a fight in like game one of the second
round and now you're down three to one and you're
probably going home.

Speaker 3 (02:24):
WHOA.

Speaker 1 (02:26):
He's a very serious basketball man, and he's also always
been very pro Luca. You know, so, Uh, I would
be lying if I told you I knew specifically how
Luca's been defensively in the first two games of the series,
because I wasn't dialed in on that. But I did
see some numbers that were like last year where they
were talking about blow by rate. Now, man, I'd never

(02:49):
even seen people talking about blow by rate until last year.

Speaker 3 (02:53):
Christina just doesn't sound appropriate.

Speaker 2 (02:55):
Well, you look for a partner with a high blow rate.

Speaker 1 (03:00):
Yeah, you don't want him to blow by Yeah you wanna,
you wanna ideally, yeah you wanna. You want a strong
blowrate reception strategy, right, but uh but this is this
is you know, not new. There's been plenty of criticism before. Uh,
but I will say, man, this Los Angeles Laker team

(03:20):
is not near. The people that are around Luca are
not nearly as good as the people that are on
Anthony Edwards, and he probably is saving all of his
energy to go put up huge numbers on offense, which
he has.

Speaker 2 (03:32):
Right So okay, but this isn't the only one. There's
also Kendrick Perkins going in on Luca.

Speaker 3 (03:38):
Now.

Speaker 5 (03:39):
Watching the fourth quarter, the second half, the four quarter
in particular, I saw what Nico Harris was talking about.
Harrison was talking about when it comes down to the
reason why he traded Luca. He traded Luca because he
felt that you can't that Dallas Mavericks. The Dallas Mavericks

(03:59):
were not going to be able to win a championship
with Luke. We all know this. I didn't feel that
way watching the game, looking at Anthony Itwards, I'm saying
to myself, Anthony Illwards is going to win a championship
before Luka Doncics. Anthony Ellwits is built different. Anthony Edwards

(04:20):
is a better all around basketball player than Luka Doncics.
Now we could talk.

Speaker 4 (04:26):
I could come on here like.

Speaker 3 (04:28):
To keep going.

Speaker 2 (04:29):
No, that's fine, So but it's I've noticed more and
more of these takes as the Lakers have gotten more
and more down in this series with Minnesota, and you
just weren't hearing it for a while. Now we heard
some of this. I mean, hell, just drive around listening
to sports stock radio on Dallas Port Worth. You would
have heard a lot of this stuff over the last
couple of years. But in the aftermath of the trade,

(04:50):
it was all just glowing and really only looking at
the best facets of Luca's career and the way that
he plays. And again, I I agree with what Zach
Lowe was saying. Nobody in the world makes this trade
the way they made the trade. It's arguably the worst
trade in the history of trading, not just sports, but
like even including lunch room trades, any trades, and the

(05:11):
history of the word trade. This is probably the worst
one ever. You know, the terriff thing, those are kind
of trades, but you kind of look into like the
thought process behind it, and that's what we're starting to
zero in on. People are now starting to say, okay, okay, okay, okay,
I can kind of understand the frustration with the defense,

(05:31):
with the arguing at officials, and no one hell would
have made that trade, and YadA, YadA, YadA. But I
just find it to be interesting that this stuff is
getting louder and louder and louder as the Lakers are
getting closer and closer and closer to being eliminated from
the first round.

Speaker 1 (05:45):
Yeah, so here's several things here, like the problems. You
guys heard me come in here before and grumble about
certain things with Luca. I mean, he's an imperfect young
person that's also a first time sorry, a five time
first NBA player, All NBA First Team. He is exceptional.

(06:05):
It doesn't mean he's Jesus and he's flawless. He's got
his flaws, but he's so good you want to work
with that and hope he gets better and matures. The
ref thing never got better. I saw him quit on
defense all the time because he was taken out of
games by refs, but not to the point where I'm like, man,
you got to get rid of him, like those are

(06:26):
both things can be true. But to do this now,
you guys realize in Game four against Minnesota, Minnesota is
a way better basketball team than the Lakers. That was
a horrible draw for the Lakers. In Game four that
they lost because they missed a shot at the buzzer
that would have tied it there in the game on

(06:46):
the road, the game that they lost. The Lakers are
so under man that JJ Reddick made the decision to
play five guys the entire second half, and one of
those guys is Dorian Finney Smith. Okay, so I want
like the idea. He's got his problems, he's got his flaws.
The Lakers weren't gonna go win anything this year. And

(07:09):
if you want to have the opinion that Anthony Edwards
is better than Luka Doncic, I have no problem with
that opinion. My thought is that when you have two
total complete badasses, you're now splitting hairs on what you prefer.
And I would say the idea that Anthony Edwards is
a better all around player than Luca's wrong. Luca's a
better passer, Luca's a better rebounder. Anthony Edwards is a

(07:30):
better defender, He's better at attacking the basket in a
different way. But they're both exceptional players. You know what's
gonna happen. Anthony Edwards is going to get run off
the floor by the Oklahoma City Thunder. So to sit
here and watch this series and go he's gonna win
a chap. I mean he might if he goes to
the East. Oklahoma City is about to post up for

(07:51):
a decade.

Speaker 2 (07:52):
Right, And it's the first take mentality. How can I
say something that's gonna get headlines and get people talking.
And Luca's always going to be in that because they
know he's a lightning rod. They know anytime they talk
about him, they're going to get headlines. But I do
look at this and I'm like, all right, man, I
wish they had done something different. We all do. But
and really it's the it's the age difference is the

(08:14):
biggest problem, because, like you said, different guys like different
types of players. If they decided we want to win
with defense, okay, great, but you just got six years
older and got a guy who's always hurt. We don't
have to go over all of that over over and
over again. But I do wonder about what it's going
to be like for Luca to be in that media market.
It's a different media market. It's not hardcore like New

(08:34):
York or Jersey, but it's a bigger media market than Dallas.
I don't think it's as tough as Chicago. It's almost
like a half between, right it.

Speaker 1 (08:43):
It's like not they have a beach out there, so
everyone's like, I'm just gonna go to the beach.

Speaker 2 (08:47):
Everyone's happy, yeah for the most part. But I wonder
what that's going to be. Like we've seen what the
spotlight is like him being in LA He's getting a
ton more love, We're seeing more I don't know. I
feel like we're seeing more things from him, like the
Jumpman movie, different things like that. But are we going
to see more negative things when it doesn't go right?
And what are the options? Because what contractually what is
his situation?

Speaker 1 (09:08):
He's got one more year there, okay, and there's no
benefit to him staying unless he just wants to be
a Laker because there's no financial benefit really.

Speaker 4 (09:16):
So he could so he stays.

Speaker 2 (09:17):
So this offseason hypothetically, if they didn't like it, they
could say, we'd like to be traded if.

Speaker 1 (09:22):
He doesn't sign an extension. Wow this offseason yeah, okay,
but I think it's going to be a lot like
the Mavericks before they traded for Gafford and PJ. It's
up to the Lakers to go get a big which
they tried to do, and it's really ironic. If the
Mavericks had gotten another first round pick out of the Lakers,
they would have been screwed in their pursuit of trying
to go get a big player. And then the Mavericks

(09:43):
would have been sitting there with a lottery pick and
two future first round picks that they wanted to add
to their roster this year. I mean, but whatever, we keep,
you know, going over that over and over the irony
about this, and Kendrick Perkins went on a podcast he
used to be a network homies with JJ Reddick when
he worked for ESPN and Kendrick Perkins used to drive

(10:04):
us crazy, all right. Kendrick Perkins went on JJ Reddick's
podcast when they were teammates on ESPN, and it was incredible.
It was so good and Kendrick Perkins was so likable
and he's basically on there saying, look, we're just playing
the game, man, we know what we're doing. I'm cashing
checks on ESPN. And it was like a really insightful conversation.
Kendrick Perkins knows if he goes out there and says

(10:25):
that that we're going to play it on our show
or for example, that's all they're doing. It's again like,
so this is even Zach zach No. I think Zach
Lowe is being honest with his assessment. He doesn't play
that game, and he's not on ESPN anymore. He's a
solo act. He's doing stuff for the ringer, but he
doesn't have to go out there and stir the pot.
He's never ever been that guy, and I think that again,

(10:48):
there's things that Luca did while he was here that
drove me crazy. Like I've got a headset on. I'm
calling the game and I'm cussing under my breath, what
are you doing?

Speaker 4 (10:58):
Dude? Why are you doing this?

Speaker 1 (11:00):
And I'm like, Okay, he's twenty five years old, he's
got him mature it. Kid used to get mad at
him too.

Speaker 4 (11:06):
I watch Kid do it.

Speaker 1 (11:07):
I watch Kid going there in pressers and say things about, well,
if we're gonna spend all this time, you know, messing
with the ref and not getting back. I mean he's
saying it without saying Luca's name. Everybody knows what he's saying.
The guy is not without flaws. But again to Ben's
original point, you do not trade him at this age

(11:27):
for the return. Unless all those guys stayed healthy, the
Mavericks might be your favorite to win it this year,
but that was your one caveat. Everybody had to stay
perfectly healthy. They didn't, and we saw what happened.

Speaker 3 (11:40):
Well, we'll find out tomorrow on our show if the
Lakers are still playing or if Lucas season is done.

Speaker 1 (11:47):
I think we'll find out before our show.

Speaker 2 (11:48):
Yeah, we'll find out a little bit before our show.
But if you just want to miss TV and just
tune into our show, but I tell you, if they
get eliminated, Lakers get eliminated, there's one guy that's gonna
be very happy about that, and that's Nico's Yeah.

Speaker 4 (12:00):
Because at least the bleeding will stop.

Speaker 1 (12:01):
First up, I'll never forget the time KT looked Nico
dead in the eye and he said.

Speaker 3 (12:06):
I have a tiny penis.

Speaker 4 (12:08):
Nego traded him immediately.

Speaker 1 (12:11):
Christina is going to play some music on a rady
Wednesday night next right here on the Eagle.

Speaker 4 (12:15):
Here you going, well, I'm gonna get my sack backed, dude,
all right,
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