Lakers News: The Los Angeles Lakers will likely be back in action July.
More details emerged about the NBA’s plan to resume the 2019-20 season in Orlando on Wednesday, giving Laker fans the Los Angeles Lakers news that they have been waiting for since March.
ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski reported that the NBA intends to approve a 22-team plan to return to action in Orlando in a conference call on Thursday.
This plan includes eight regular-season games to help shape out the rest of the playoff standings before jumping into the playoffs. Thirteen teams from the Western Conference are playing with only nine from the Eastern Conference. To make the cut, teams had to be six games within the eighth spot in the conference.
There also could be a potential play-in tournament for the eighth seed if the ninth seed in the conference finishes within four games of the eighth seed. From there, according to Wojnarowski, the eighth seed would enter a double-elimination tournament and the ninth-seed a single-elimination tournament.
To simplify: the eighth seed and ninth seed would play each other. For the ninth seed to make the playoffs, they would have to beat the eighth seed in two straight games, whereas the eighth seed can win one to advance.
Lakers News: How does this affect the Lakers’ schedule?
The eight regular-season games give the Lakers a chance to not only shake the cobwebs but to test Dion Waiters and Markieff Morris in the rotation for the playoffs, something that is a huge benefit to the Lakers.
The Lakers have a 5.5-game lead on the Los Angeles Clippers in the Western Conference, so it would take a massive meltdown for the Lakers to blow that lead in just eight games. A big component of if this is even possible depends on who the Lakers play in those eight games.
Vincent Goodwill of Yahoo Sports tweeted that the plan is for the league to resume the schedules as they were before the season was suspended and if a team played one of the eight teams that did not make the cut then they would simply skip to the next opponent on the list.
There are some hurdles in this as some teams might finish their eight games before another team does then if those two teams have to play each other it would create an issue. However, Tim Reynolds of the Associated Press broke down a potential schedule for all the 22 teams in this format that makes sense and can be worked around.
If the NBA goes with a plan of playing the next eight Disney/ESPN bound teams on your schedule - capping each team at 8 games - this is what the matchups for those 22 teams COULD look like:
— Tim Reynolds (@ByTimReynolds) June 3, 2020
Disclaimers:
- Heat and Magic each need 1 game
- Lakers and Blazers each need 2 games pic.twitter.com/UgYSiITidq
So as you can see, the Miami Heat, Orlando Magic, Los Angeles Lakers and Portland Trailblazers are all short on games, with the Lakers and Heat short two games. Luckily, the league can use these teams with each other to fill that void.
The solution is simple, have the Lakers play the Blazers (in-conference) and the Heat play the Magic. That eliminates the extra game needed for Portland and Orlando. Then, have the Lakers play the Heat to square everything away. All 22 teams play eight games and mostly maintain the same schedule with only minor tweaking needed.
That would give the Lakers a schedule of the Rockets, Nuggets, Jazz, Jazz, Raptors, Pacers, Trailblazers and Heat.
It is a pretty tough slate, but they could get through it and not come close to giving up the number one seed. Now that is promising Lakers news.