The Los Angeles Lakers have been ninth in the Western Conference for quite some time now as the team currently has a 29-38 record. LA has played its worst basketball of the season in recent weeks with a 3-7 record in their last 10 games.
The only two games that the Lakers have won since the All-Star Break needed 50-point games from LeBron James for the team to edge out the Golden State Warriors and Washington Wizards. LeBron is not going to have many more 50-point games.
Despite the team’s immense struggle, it has still felt like a guarantee that the Lakers will at least make the Play-In Tournament. There is very little hope once there, but the team falling below the 10th seed in the Western Conference has always seemed a bit far-fetched.
However, after watching the Lakers get absolutely destroyed by a Phoenix Suns team without Chris Paul, it now seems possible — if not likely — that they will fall out of the Play-In Tournament altogether.
The Portland Trail Blazers could boot the Los Angeles Lakers out of the play-in.
I know what you are thinking: this is a Portland Trail Blazers team that is without Damian Lillard that has essentially given up on this season. While Portland is without Lillard and did trade away some of its best assets, they are still somehow playing better basketball than the Lakers with a 4-6 record in the last 10 games.
As it stands right now, the Lakers have a 1.5-game lead over the New Orleans Pelicans in the 10th seed and a 2.5-game lead over the Blazers. That is not a lot of cushion for a Lakers team that looks completely lost out there.
The most concerning thing for the purple and gold moving forward is the remaining schedules for both teams. Los Angeles has a gauntlet to finish the season while the Blazers have one of the easiest remaining schedules in the entire NBA.
Eleven of the remaining 15 games for the Lakers are against teams that are above .500 and have essentially secured their spots in the NBA Playoffs. Of the remaining four, two are against the New Orleans Pelicans (potential play-in opponent), one is against the Washington Wizards (on the road) and the last is against the Oklahoma City Thunder.
With how the team has been playing, a 4-11 record seems like a fair prediction for the final 15 games, putting them at 33-49.
Meanwhile, the Blazers would have to go 8-8 in the final 16 games in order to finish with a 34-48 record. That might seem like a tall order for a team like Portland but they can certainly do it with the opponents they are playing down the stretch.
Thirteen of the team’s remaining 16 games are against teams with a losing record this season. It is not like the Blazers are playing a lot of mid-level teams that are hovering right below .500, either. There are quite a few games against the worst teams in the league.
Ten of the final 16 games are against the Oklahoma City Thunder, Houston Rockets, Detroit Pistons, Indiana Pacers and San Antonio Spurs. Those are all teams with worse records than the Blazers this season. Throw in the New York Knicks, who are one game better, and the Blazers have nine games against some of the worst teams in the league.
Obviously, nothing is guaranteed, but Portland could easily go 7-4 in those 11 games. That means the team would just have to go 1-4 against the remaining opponents of the Atlanta Hawks, New Orleans Pelicans (twice), Brooklyn Nets, Dallas Mavericks and Utah Jazz.
Can Portland pick up a win in one of those games and boot the Los Angeles Lakers out of the NBA Play-In Tournament? Absolutely.