« Reply #700 on: February 07, 2019, 01:41:03 PM »
Well the additions of Burks and Barnes certainly greatly increases the Kings playoff chances.
It is most likely a two team race to make it now Jazz and Spurs have been playing good for about two months and no reason to think it won't continue. Clippers and Mavericks punted the season with their trades. Minny is fading and beat up. So it most likely just between Lakers and Kings. Who would you have making it out of those 2? Would be crazy if Lebron missed the playoffs (and would probably sour free agent interest for there)
That was another one of my over the summer thoughts that was widely panned on this board i.e. the Lakers weren't a shoe in for the playoffs (granted I often said it in the same breath that I thought Cleveland had a chance to make the playoffs while the Lakers didn't and Love's injury ended that other part very quickly).
The West has a lot of really good teams. That was known and when you have a lot of really good teams anything can happen. At this point the Lakers might be better just shutting James down (it will never happen, but it doesn't mean they shouldn't). He clearly isn't back to 100% and if you remove him from the team the rest of the team might actually perform like James isn't around and increase their trade value or inversely just suck and get the Lakers a much better pick to throw at the Pelicans or some other team this summer.
I can't really imagine that your prediction was based on Lebron getting injured though for the first time in his career. I think anyone on here would have guessed they had the chance to miss the playoffs if Lebron missed significant time. So kind of a weird flex.
Even with Lebron they were on a 47.8 win pace. Even that had a decent chance of not making the playoffs in the west this year and there was no way that James was actually going to play all 82 games again this year (I would have guessed 70-75, which he obviously can't hit now). The Lakers looked like a 45ish win team to me over the summer and I suspect that is about where they end up. Given LA, MIN, and MEM have all been sellers this year, I'd be a bit surprised if the Lakers don't make the playoffs (assuming that James plays ~95% of the remaining games) and just edge out the Kings, but I can't see them winning all that many more than 45 games at this point without a major trade (I don't think a few buy-out adds will do all that much for them).
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