Lakers News: Surprising Odds Revealed For LA's Total Wins In 2023-24
With training camps for the 2023-24 NBA season now just over a month away, Las Vegas oddsmakers have released their prognoses for how they predict teams will perform this year.
As you'll recall, your Los Angeles Lakers kicked off the 2022-23 season with an ill-fitting roster loaded with over-the-hill point guards, and began the year with an abysmal 2-10 record. A series of savvy midseason trades from team president Rob Pelinka balanced out their roster and set them up for a run to the Western Conference Finals. It's astonishing, then, that Vegas pundits at BetOnline have given the team the exact same preseason over/under they did ahead of last year.
LA's over/under this year is set at 47.5, the exact same line afforded the club when it was playing major minutes to Russell Westbrook, Patrick Beverley and Kendrick Nunn.
There is a glass-half-full appraisal one could make on this weird quirk. Los Angeles was overvalued last year based on the past performances of Westbrook (the MVP in 2017, after all, and still an All-Star as late as 2020) and Patrick Beverley (an All-Defensive Team selection as recently as 2020). They're also being undervalued a bit this year despite their run, though that is perhaps due in part to baked-in expectations by bettors that Lakers stars LeBron James and Anthony Davis will miss major time.
While that is probably true, it's worth pointing out that the 19-8 season finish the post-trade Lakers had transpired while Davis and James were both grappling with injuries and missing games. Perhaps Vegas is underestimating the team's depth, especially now with the advent of a new point guard, Gabe Vincent, who's even better than their incumbent starter at the position, D'Angelo Russell.
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