Los Angeles Lakers: Five realistic expectations for 2018-2019 season

5. The Lakers secure a top-4 seed

The Golden State Warriors and the Houston Rockets are the far and away favorites to lock up the top two seeds in the West, there’s no question about that. After those two, however, the Lakers are right there in the running along with teams like Oklahoma City, Utah, and New Orleans for the other 2 seeds.

OKC is very top-heavy with Russell Westbrook and Paul George, and haven’t found a way to generate reliable offense when Russ sits. The Thunder have a 110.1 offensive rating when Russ plays, as opposed to a lowly 100.4 when he sits. In addition, the health of this team is another cause for concern, with Westbrook having yet another knee surgery, PG also recovering from his own knee surgery, and Roberson coming back from a patellar tendon tear.

New Orleans is in a similar boat with Anthony Davis and Jrue Holiday, in addition to the fact that this team has yet to crack 50 wins in the Anthony Davis era. No, I’m not discounting the Pelicans just because they signed our beloved Julius Randle this past offseason. This team has glaring holes on both the wing and point guard positions which will definitely affect them over the course of the regular season.

Utah is a pretty balanced team and is actually one of my locks as a top-4 team in the West. They have one of the best defenses in the league, and a rising star in Donovan Mitchell. This team has been steadily improving since the hiring of Quin Snyder and I fully expect Snyder to make some version of this face if his team doesn’t crack the top-4.

Either way, the competition will be stiff, but luckily, the Lakers will have one consistent advantage over all of these teams. They’ll have the best player in the league on a nightly basis, which is an incredibly valuable thing to have in close games, where the Lakers have found themselves coming up short this past season.

The difference between getting say, a three seed and a six seed could be as little as one or two games, and could even come down to tiebreakers.

LeBron is one of only a handful of players who can single-handedly change the outcome of a close game, and in an incredibly competitive Western Conference, that will absolutely come in handy.

The margin is going to be razor thin for this Lakers team, but nevertheless, this team has a unique combination of talent, youth, and depth that will play a big factor for them en route to acquiring top-4 seed.