The Los Angeles Lakers needed the All-Star Break badly, even if there has been some chaos during the break. From a basketball standpoint, this veteran-ladened team needed a few days off to recoup and try to put the pieces back together in the second half.
The Lakers are running out of time and need to fix things fast if they are going to avoid the Play-In Tournament. LA is currently the ninth seed in the Western Conference and is six games back of the Denver Nuggets, who are the sixth seed.
It is extremely unlikely that the Lakers are going to catch the top-six teams in the Western Conference with only 24 games to play but they better hope that they get the seventh or eighth seed at the very least. As the ninth or tenth seed the Lakers would have to win two games in a row to make the playoffs. Can we really trust them to do that?
How might the Los Angeles Lakers finish in these final 24 games?
My preseason record prediction, where I broke down every single game, is perhaps my worst prediction in my young career thus far. I predicted the Lakers to go 62-20 this season… which is quite hilarious in hindsight. Look, I thought Russell Westbrook would make them a better regular-season team, okay! I always stated that there would be issues in the playoffs but in the regular season, he would make them better.
He didn’t. He made them worse. The Lakers reached their 20th loss of the season on January 9 at the exact halfway point of the season. Isn’t that ironic.
Knowing what I know now with Westbrook struggling and Anthony Davis, I thought I would try and redeem myself by predicting every Lakers game after the All-Star Break.