Lakers News: A Western Conference Play-In Competitor Is Giving Up
Your Los Angeles Lakers have had quite the week.
LA has gone 3-0; Anthony Davis, D'Angelo Russell (for two of those games) and Austin Reaves have been absolutely torching opponents; and now the club appears to be ridding itself of one of its play-in tournament competitors.
Shams Charania of The Athletic reports that the Western Conference's current No. 13 seed, the 32-41 Portland Trail Blazers, are heavily weighing whether or not to shut down All-Star point guard Damian Lillard for the rest of the season. Charania cites the club's intent as "taking precautions" as the 32-year-old Lillard deals with a supposed calf injury, but this reeks a lot of abject tanking.
Portland is 3.5 games behind the West's tenth-seeded Oklahoma City Thunder (yesterday's felled opponents for LA), and appears liable to miss the postseason with or without Lillard's availability.
Should this transpire, it would represent a lucky break for the 37-37 Lakers (currently the eighth seed in the West), and narrows down the effective tally of postseason hopefuls in the conference to 12 teams.
There is one negative caveat to this news however, from a Lakers perspective: several of the other clubs jockeying for play-in/playoff positioning will face off against a Portland club without its best player across the season's final few weeks.
Across their final nine games of a second straight lottery-bound year, the Blazers will face off against the Thunder (the West's tenth seed), the 36-37 New Orleans Pelicans (the ninth seed), the 37-37 Minnesota Timberwolves (the seventh seed), the 39-35 Los Angeles Clippers (the fourth seed), and the 39-36 Golden State Warriors (the sixth seed). Just 1.5 games separate LA from Golden State, while the Lakers are only a game ahead of the Pellies. Point being: these opponents may have all just gotten an automatic W.
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