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00:00I'm Jill Painter-Lopez for Sports Illustrated, joined by Melissa Rowland.
00:08And Melissa, the Lakers have arrived into the NBA bubble.
00:11They got there on Thursday, and on Saturday, they will have their first official team practice
00:16since the NBA season was suspended on March 11th.
00:20What are you expecting?
00:21Well, there's a lot of interesting things to look out for.
00:24One of the things that I'm really curious to see is where the Lakers are right now.
00:29Obviously, before the hiatus, they had really hit their stride.
00:32They had huge wins over the Clippers and the Milwaukee Bucks.
00:36LeBron James, who is 35 years old and in his 17th season in the league, was playing MVP
00:41caliber basketball.
00:42It looked like he was ready to try to lead the Lakers to their first title since 2010.
00:47Now they have this long layoff, four months, so it'll be interesting to see if they have
00:51a lot of creaks that they need to work through.
00:53Another thing that I think really works to the Lakers' advantage is their chemistry.
00:58As Lakers General Manager Rob Palenka said, the mental aspect of the bubble is going to
01:03be more important than the physical aspect.
01:05You know, Jill, think about it.
01:06These guys are going to be away from their support systems, their families, their friends
01:09for months, and so the Clippers have a huge advantage because they really like each other.
01:14These guys hang out regularly, and that's going to really, really help them because
01:19obviously the mental aspect really affects your game, as we've seen over and over again
01:26in sports.
01:27So there's a lot of interesting things to look out for here.
01:30Very exciting that the NBA is about to resume.