If the Los Angeles Lakers qualify for the postseason, is there any chance they can avoid the No. 8 seed and a first-round matchup with the Golden State Warriors?
It’s fair to say that there aren’t many, if any, Los Angeles Lakers fans interested in seeing the Lakers sneak into the playoffs as the 8th seed in the West just to get trounced in four games by the All-Star team up in NorCal. So, let’s examine the Lakers chances of climbing from 10th to 7th in the West.
After the Lakers got overwhelmed by the “mighty” Hawks in Atlanta people have finally started to realize that there’s a real chance LeBron James might miss the playoffs for the first time in what seems like whatever.
Recently, ESPN ran an article entitled, “LeBron’s Lakers not favored to make playoffs at SuperBook.”
The gist of the article is that one Las Vegas sports book, named SuperBook, just offered a 1-week prop bet about whether or not the Lakers will make the playoffs this year and SuperBook is giving betters better odds that the Purple and Gold won’t make the postseason.
To make matters seem even worse for the Lakers, ESPN’s BPI Playoffs Odds tool gives the Lakers a measly 5.8% chance of getting the 8th seed in the West.
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Let’s examine the numbers and see what it’s going to take for the Lakers to get the 7th seed in the West:
The San Antonio Spurs are currently in 7th place out West and ESPN’s win/loss projection tool has the Spurs ending the season with a record of 46-36.
At present, the Lakers are one game under .500 at 28-29. LA has 25 more games left in the season, so if things play out the way ESPN has projected for San Antonio, the Lakers are going to have to go 19-6 through the rest of the season to get to 47 wins and leapfrog the Spurs.
Here’s a list of the elite teams the Lakers are going to face over the last 25 games of the year:
- Houston
- Milwaukee twice
- LA Clippers twice
- Denver
- Boston
- Toronto
- Utah twice
- Oklahoma City
- Golden State
- Portland
That’s 13 games against ten very good teams. The Lakers are going to have to go 7-6 against that slate of opponents and then the Purple and Gold must go 12-0 against every weaker team they face.
There is one other factor that I need to mention: The Lakers end the season against the Warriors, Clippers, Jazz, and Trail Blazers. There’s a reasonable chance that Golden State and Portland will already have their playoff seeding set and that they’ll rest their players. Also, the Clippers aren’t as good as they were two weeks ago, because they traded their best player, Tobias Harris, to the 76ers.
The Lakers started the season at 3-5, but from October 31st – December 10th the Purple and Gold went 15-5, which is a .777 winning percentage. If the Lakers are to go 19-6 over the rest of the season they’ll need a .779 winning percentage.
The Lakers have shown that they’re capable of winning at a high level over an extended period of time, but their remaining schedule is much more difficult through the last 25 games than it was earlier in the year when they reeled off 15 wins in twenty games.
Also, the Lakers aren’t playing nearly as well right now as they were in November and the first part of December. Moreover, when have the Lakers ever won 12 games in a row against lesser competition?
My fellow writer, Andrew Stevens III, here at Lake Show Life, just wrote an article entitled, “The Lakers are in need of a miracle to make the playoffs.”
Los Angeles Lakers
I think that’s a little extreme at this point in the season. The Tobias Harris-less Clippers are currently holding down 8th place in the West and I think if the Lakers finish the season with a 15-10 record, that will be good enough to get into the playoffs as the last seed. If the Lakers start to get things together and play as a team again, it’s very likely they can win 15 out of their last 25 games.
I do think, though, that it will take an actual miracle for the Lakers to replicate their winning percentage from earlier in the season against the third most difficult remaining schedule in the league.
The Bucks currently have the best record in the league at 43-14, which is .754 winning percentage. Even though the Lakers have LeBron, it seems almost impossible for LA to finish the year on a run that leads to a higher winning percentage than the Bucks have amassed throughout the year.
Unless a cheesy, Disney sports movie singularity occurs on the Lakers over the last portion of the season, the best LA can do is the 8th seed in the west. Everyone knows what the last playoff spot means: a merciless death at the hands of the Warriors (pun intended).
The Lakers current predicament leads to an interesting question: Should the Lakers tank the rest of the season to get into the lottery?