Time is ticking down on the regular season, and the Los Angeles Lakers are holding steady in the standings with three wins in their last four games. Currently sitting in the ninth spot in the Western Conference, LA will need to make a serious push to get themselves out of the play-in range before mid-April.
With 19 games remaining on the schedule, there will be no room for error for the Lakers. There is a good chance they end up in the postseason in some capacity, but making it to the playoffs is far from a guarantee.
Looking ahead to various scenarios the Lakers could be faced with in the postseason, some outcomes are more favorable than others. These are three situations that LA will need to do everything they can to avoid.
Facing Denver in the first round
Last season, the Lakers wound up with the seven seed and were able to upset the second-seeded Grizzlies thanks to a favorable matchup. With Brandon Clarke and Steven Adams both out due to injury, LA's big men went to work on the interior, and that ended up being the difference in the series.
But as we saw, Anthony Davis and company ran into a nightmare matchup when they were torched by the likes of Nikola Jokic and the Denver Nuggets in the Western Conference Finals last year. The defending champions are a potential first round opponent for the Lakers this year, and LA will want to avoid that matchup at all costs.
Denver is one of the few teams that can match the Lakers' size and physicality on the interior, and they would almost certainly bounce the Lake Show in round one. The Nuggets currently hold the third spot in the West. If they remain there at the end of the regular season, LA should be trying to get any seed but the sixth.
Being the 9 or 10 seed
The Lakers have been in the play-in range of the standings for a large portion of the season at this point. While entering the playoffs as a seven or eight seed is far from the best scenario, we saw last year that it is not the end of the world.
LA of course made their run to the conference finals as a seven seed, while the Miami Heat made it all the way to the Finals as the eight seed in the East. The numbers say that winning a championship as a lower seed is much more difficult, but playoff success can still be had.
The scenario that the Lakers would do best to avoid is finishing with the ninth or tenth seed in the West. Doing so would massively decrease their odds of ultimately being in the playoff field.
Over the course of the three seasons the current play-in format has existed, teams finishing with the seventh or eighth seed in the regular season have gone on to make the playoffs nine times, while missing out on the playoffs just three times. Conversely, ninth and tenth place finishers have only made the playoffs three times, missing out nine times.
History favors the teams who finish in the top eight of their conference. Failing to finish in this range would create an impossibly tough scenario for the Lakers.
Losing to the Clippers
Obviously, taking a loss to any team in the playoffs or play-in would be a disappointment. But if there is one team the Lakers want to be sure they do not have their season ended by, it is the Clippers.
Los Angeles has always been and will always be the Lakers' city. The franchise has too much history and too many accomplishments to ever have their status as top dog usurped by the likes of an organization with no championships to their name.
The Clippers have always been the Lakers' little brother. But in 2019 when Kawhi Leonard and Paul George officially joined the Clips, they created a legitimate rival to Anthony Davis and LeBron James' Lakers. Thus, the "Battle for LA" was born, and some memorable high-level matchups between the two have occurred for the last five seasons now.
Fans have been waiting on a playoff matchup between the Clippers and Lakers ever since 2019 to no avail. The two teams have never met in the playoffs, and a potential meeting in 2024 would certainly draw a lot of eyes. The Clippers would love nothing more than to get their dream matchup with the Lakers and finally prove to the world that they are on the same level as the Lake Show.
While that is a series the Lakers could absolutely win, losing to the Clippers would be a disastrous scenario. It would not erase the fact that the Lakers still have a 17 to zero edge in championships, but it would give Clippers fans all the ammo they need to talk trash for the next decade.