The Los Angeles Lakers entered Friday sitting in first place in the Western Conference, and it sure must feel good. You can sit there and say, "Well, it's early," which is true, but that would also be to downplay the benefits of such a hot start. Any team would take an 11-2 start to the season if you gave them that option a night before the regular season campaign began.
The Lakers have been cooking and looking like a surprise contender. Luka Doncic looks like the early MVP frontrunner. All is peaches and cream in Lakerland these days. But it's very very important that the Lakers not get complacent or fat and satisfied about the current state of affairs. Let's not forget that the Western Conference is still lethal. The Lakers have to stay on the aggressive for the entire season to survive. They just do.
The West is still absolutely deadly, meaning the Lakers cannot get comfortable
The top 10 in the West are all either currently on a win streak or suffered a loss by playing against one of the other top 10 West teams...in other words one of them had to lose.
— Trevor Lane (@TrevorLane) November 12, 2026
The Nuggets are currently on a 49 win pace and are the 10 seed! pic.twitter.com/aCLnPAX10k
It would be wrong not to still consider the San Antonio Spurs the favorites in the West, given three factors: San Antonio’s appearance in the NBA Finals last season, Victor Wembanyama’s ongoing rise, and the Oklahoma City Thunder’s injury misfortune (seeing as OKC has been San Antonio’s biggest rival).
That being said, no one would be surprised to see Kevin Durant and the Houston Rockets in the NBA Finals this season, nor would it be shocking if Anthony Edwards (with his new partner in crime, LaMelo Ball) finally got the Minnesota Timberwolves over the hump of the Western Conference Finals under elite head coach Chris Finch. Edwards is hurt at the moment, but he’ll be back for the latter chunk of the season and might actually benefit from the rest in the long run.
Then there’s the fact that the Golden State Warriors, Denver Nuggets, and Thunder are all very much in the contention picture, with three all-time greats in Stephen Curry, Nikola Jokić, and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander leading each squad. Curry just got hurt, but he shouldn’t be out for more than two or three weeks, per reports.
The Portland Trail Blazers have already shown that they’re a tough opponent for the Lakers (Portland beat LA with Ja Morant in the lineup), and the Dallas Mavericks look like they’d be a tough postseason matchup for anyone with their dynamic duo of Cooper Flagg and Kyrie Irving, not to mention a head coach who’s hungry to prove he belongs in Dusty May.
And don’t forget about the Memphis Grizzlies, who have surprised everyone and taken on the look and feel of a playoff team that the bigger fish in the West would be annoyed to have to swim with for a round.
In sum, the West is completely loaded, per usual, and the Lakers absolutely cannot take their foot off the gas at any point this season. They are riding high now, but a bad stretch or two could result in them easily slipping down to the bottom of the playoff picture.
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