The Los Angeles Lakers season may be headed for an ending nobody thought was possible at the start of the season. After the Lakers fell to the Dallas Mavericks, they also fell to the 11th seed in the Western Conference. This puts them out of the Play-In tournament in favor of the San Antonio Spurs.
The Lakers are going to be stuck in a genuinely heated battle to get the last two spots in the play-in tournament, with the upcoming schedules looking particularly worrying for the Lakers.
Out of their next 7 games, the Lakers will be facing 5 teams in playoff contention (playing the Denver Nuggets twice). The anomaly matchup is the Oklahoma City Thunder, but even they have been a very hard out for the Lakers this season. Their most important game will take place on Friday when they face the New Orleans Pelicans again.
As of now, the Lakers won't make the playoffs 👀 pic.twitter.com/Pfg4AizAiA
— ESPN (@espn) March 30, 2022
The Spurs have a better schedule than the Lakers, as they will face the tanking Portland Trail Blazers twice in their final seven of the season. Outside that, they face the Grizzlies, Mavs, Timberwolves, Warriors, and Nuggets. The intensity their opponents play the games with will be seen depending on how tight the 3-7 seeds in the West stay, as four of those teams are locked in that battle.
The Pelicans have the best schedule out of the three, as they face the Lakers, Clippers, Kings, and Trail Blazers, before ending their season against the Nuggets and Warriors, hopefully at a time they rest some key players for the playoffs, unless the battle for seeding goes down to the wire.
The Lakers have a very tough hand to play with. However, with Anthony Davis returning soon, they will need every bit of his ability to plug all the holes in their lineup, especially if LeBron can’t produce at the same level after his ankle injury that kept him out in the Lakers’ loss against the Mavericks.
