Lakers News: Where ESPN Ranks LA Heading Into Next Season

This past season ended further down the road than anyone thought it would for the Los Angeles Lakers.

As a refresher, the Lakers were once mired in struggles and dysfunction and sat as low as 13th in the Western Conference standings, looking many miles away from being a play-in team, much less a team capable of making any sort of run.

Then the trade deadline came.

In were D'Angelo Russell, Rui Hachimura, Jarred Vanderbilt, Malik Beasley and Mo Bamba as part of a much needed roster reshuffling.

Hachimura, Russell, and Vanderbilt each played a big role in leading the team back to relevancy, and the new-look Lakers along with Austin Reaves, LeBron James, and Anthony Davis led Los Angeles on a playoff run that ended in the Western Conference Finals.

Now with the season in the rear view, the Lakers look like a team that can again put up a challenge in the west, with a bevy of free agent decisions to come beforehand.

Los Angeles certainly will be an intriguing story and after their playoff run, ESPN ranked them in the No. 7 spot in their first edition of NBA Power Rankings ahead of the 2023-2024 season.

ESPN's Dave McMenamin said the following on LA:

"Prior to being swept by Denver in the conference finals, the Lakers reeled off 18 wins in their previous 24 games from the end of the regular season through the play-in tournament and first two rounds of the playoffs -- a .750 winning percentage, better than Milwaukee's NBA-best mark of .707 for the entirety of the 2022-23 regular season. Was that enough of a sample size to convince L.A. to run it back with the same core, or will the offseason bring more roster upheaval?"

Free agency will be a crucial period for the Lakers, as Reaves, Hachimura, Russell, as well as point guard Dennis Schroder all hit free agency in a few weeks.

It'll be a numbers game for the Lakers, and depending on how they decide to approach it, that could determine what the franchise does going forward as they get closer to next season.