Los Angeles Lakers: 3 players who should be axed from the playoff rotation
By Jason Reed
The Los Angeles Lakers are currently fighting to stay out of the play-in tournament in the Western Conference with huge back-to-back wins over Phoenix and New York. At the time of writing this, the Lakers are one game back of the Portland Trail Blazers and Dallas Mavericks for the sixth seed.
Both Portland and Dallas own the regular-season tiebreaker over the Lakers, so it is essentially a two-game hurdle that the Lakers must overcome. The Lakers have three fairly easy games remaining while Dallas has three very easy games remaining.
Portland is not as fortunate. Damian Lillard and co. have to play Utah, Phoenix and Denver.
Regardless of if it is in the play-in tournament or as the sixth seed in the West, the Los Angeles Lakers are going to shrink the rotation for the playoffs. This will naturally be compounded by LeBron James and Anthony Davis re-joining the team.
Most of the roster will probably see some playing time in one form or another in blowout wins or losses, especially with the health of the two stars. However, if we use last year as a barometer, there were nine players that were truly part of the rotation and averaged 10 or more minutes per game in the playoffs.
As it stands right now, 13 players are averaging more than 10 minutes per game this season. There are only 240 minutes in total.
Something has to give for the Los Angeles Lakers.
Here are the three players that will likely take the brunt of the minutes tightening and be removed from the planned playoff rotation.