Lakers Playoff Watch: Los Angeles Inching Closer To Play-In Bracket
Your totally revamped Los Angeles Lakers continue to make major inroads on a return to the NBA postseason.
Following their 111-108 27-point road comeback win Sunday afternoon against the Dallas Mavericks, LA briefly climbed into the 11th seed in the Western Conference with a 29-32 record. Then Damian Lillard hit, as the All-Star Portland Trail Blazers point guard scored a whopping 71 points against the lowly Houston Rockets to propel Portland back to the 11th seed by night's end.
The Lakers have now won three in a row, and four of the five games they've played since D'Angelo Russell, Malik Beasley, Jarred Vanderbilt, and Mo Bamba arrived at Crypto.com Arena (okay, fine, also Davon Reed). LA has also won six of its last ten games, but really the five prior contests reflect a different club altogether, so the more recent five-game sample size is more imperative here.
Los Angeles is now just one game behind the 10th-seeded New Orleans Pelicans, a team that is fading fast without All-Star Zion Williamson. Since the 6'6" power forward went down with a hamstring injury on January 2nd, NOLA has gone just 7-17. And given that Williamson is expected to be out for at least a few more weeks, it seems likely that the Pelicans will soon slip out of even play-in tournament contention.
The 28-32 Oklahoma City Thunder, whom the Lakers just lapped, have been sitting their best player, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, for the last few games, as is their custom near the end of the season, in the hopes of securing yet another lottery pick. So it seems that at least these two clubs will be out the play-in picture, paving the way for the Lakers to inch closer to a top 10 seed and a .500 record... assuming LeBron James and Anthony Davis can stay healthy which, uh, is no guarantee.
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