The Los Angeles Lakers have spent a ton of the 2025-26 season licking their wounds through all the bumps and bruises this campaign brought. Those bumps and bruises are back, with a vengeance, but there is no more time to roll with the punches. The NBA Playoffs are less than two weeks away.
Luka Doncic and Austin Reaves are both gone. They are expected to be out through at least the first round. The Lakers know they are going to have to win a series without them if they want an opportunity to see Doncic and Reaves suit up again this season.
Other teams in the Western Conference would love to rob Los Angeles of that opportunity. They can smell the blood of a wounded foe in the water. That makes the Lakers a first-round matchup that everyone should be quietly positioning for. It is something Bill Simmons and Zach Lowe discussed on a recent podcast.
"If those guys are both out, I think the Lakers clearly surpass the [Houston] Rockets as the team that you'd most want to play in the first round if you were one of the best Western Conference teams in the top six," Lowe said.
Everyone will want the Lakers in the first round of the NBA Playoffs
As much as both Simmons and Lowe have been villians in Laker land throughout the season, what is being said would be more than a fair point. Kicking JJ Redick's team while they are down is going to be high on the priority list for someone out there.
Going through the Lakers right now is fighting off first-option hoops from LeBron James, and daring the other guys to beat you. Is it impossible for Los Angeles to defy the odds and move on? No. Will they be heavy underdogs in any matchup they get? Absolutely.
29 games — that is the total amount of contests the Lakers got this season with a healthy Doncic, James, and Reaves. When they did play together, the results ended up proving themselves to be really good for the star-studded trio.
The month of March saw everything click between those guys and around them as well. The Lakers looked legit.
It will be imperfect circumstances the rest of the way in Los Angeles. If the Lakers manage to stay alive long enough to get that star power back, it will still be an uphill battle to reestablish what was there before the injuries. Before that, though, they will have to worry about not being food for any of their hungry West rivals.