Lakers News: LA Fans Looking Past Timberwolves, Confident Team Can Beat Grizzlies
The good news: your 43-39 Los Angeles Lakers have secured a return to the postseason following a miserable year off. LA wrapped up its regular season with a victory, albeit a hard-fought one against a tanking Utah Jazz team's scrubs.
The bad news: the Lakers did not quite make the playoffs proper, and will at the very least have to fend off the 42-40 Minnesota Timberwolves on Tuesday in a play-in game. As the seventh seed in the West, Los Angeles will host the eighth-seeded Timberwolves at Crypto.com Arena.
Should the Lakers lose against the Timberwolves, they'll get another crack at a playoff appearance and the No. 8 seed (and thus a matchup against the top-seeded Denver Nuggets) in a game against the winner of the New Orleans Pelicans' play-in bout with the Oklahoma City Thunder.
Yours truly is pretty confident Los Angeles will beat a reeling Timberwolves team whose players are punching each other on the sidelines. Minnesota is also going to be missing forward Naz Reid and Jaden McDaniels, two very valuable role players. If that happens, LA will face off against the West's second-seeded Memphis Grizzlies (51-31) in an optimal playoff series. Memphis will be without starting center Steven Adams or key reserve big Brandon Clarke for the duration of the postseason, two huge losses that should benefit LA center Anthony Davis most of all.
Needless to say, Lakers fans are pretty darn optimistic Los Angeles can slay Minnesota and then pull off the upset against Memphis.
Small forward Dillon Brooks, Shannon Sharpe's favorite Grizzly, had a very Dillon Brookscore fit during Memphis' final game of the regular season, a 115-100 loss to the Oklahoma City Thunder.
Brooks' hilarious "Superfly"-channeling outfit instilled a lot of confidence in the Lakers faithful:
That specific series tally has proven to be a common refrain on Twitter among LA fans, one of whom thinks LA will win every series, presumably through the NBA Finals, in six games:
LA fans really, really abhorred seeing the Grizzlies succeed in snagging the No. 2 seed:
When presented with the finalized playoff brackets, fans were pretty brazen about their LA picks:
It makes sense. LA certainly has the talent to actually compete for a title in a wide-open Western Conference, although on paper the Phoenix Suns and Denver Nuggets probably feel like the favorites.
LA already caught a huge break ahead of its play-in game, as star Timberwolves center Rudy Gobert has been suspended by his own team for punching comrade Kyle Anderson during a timeout yesterday.
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