The 2024-25 regular season is oh so close to being over. The Los Angeles Lakers and their fans should be holding their breath, hoping for as little movement in the Western Conference standings as possible.
The Lakers picked up a crucial 112-97 victory over the Dallas Mavericks on Wednesday. The redemption game for Luka Doncic in Dallas had the bonus effect of giving Los Angeles the inside track to locking up the third seed in the conference. The Lakers are now only one win away from clinching that spot and simplifying their playoff run.
"It's an accomplishment to be in the playoffs. We want the third seed," JJ Redick told Lakers Daily after his team locked up a spot in the top six.
"Obviously we want the third seed, and we're gonna go after it for sure," Doncic said, agreeing with his head coach.
If the Lakers lock themselves into the spot they are all claiming to want, a bracket similar to what is seen today would be the perfect outcome for their championship aspirations.
The Western Conference is aligning perfectly right now
if the standings today were the standings for this year's postseason, 40-year-old LeBron James would be doing a backflip somewhere. The path to a fifth championship in his legendary career would look very realistic.
Now no one move... pic.twitter.com/88kT2rbeRy
— Trevor Lane (@Trevor_Lane) April 10, 2025
The Lakers would be slated to face the Memphis Grizzlies in the first round of the NBA Playoffs. That is the team most fans have been hoping for in the first postseason matchup. There is recent history of beating this core and the turmoil in Tennessee after firing Taylor Jenkins only adds to the reasoning of why they would be the ideal matchup in the three-six showdown.
The danger from this bracket would come from the Golden State Warriors securing the seventh seed and a first-round upset over the Houston Rockets. For the Lakers, they would much rather face a young Rockets team that is still a couple of years away from being a genuine threat.
Should that be the case, Los Angeles would have likely used up relatively minimal energy to make their way over to a date with the Oklahoma City Thunder in the Western Conference Finals. In this scenario, they get the added bonus of having the Thunder do their dirty work and eliminate either the Los Angeles Clippers or Denver Nuggets in a second-round matchup.
The Lakers proved they can hang with the Thunder when they absolutely blew them out of the building in the first half of a back-to-back on the road. The second part of those two straight contests in Oklahoma City involved Los Angeles losing, but it certainly was not without controversy. One would imagine the Lakers like how they measure up to the league's most dominant regular-season team.
This bracket is like Adam Silver playing the role of Moses in parting the Red Sea for the Lakers to make it to this year's NBA Finals. Whoever comes out of the Eastern Conference should not feel like an overwhelming task for the Lakers at that point.