Anthony Davis said it was very important for the Los Angeles Lakers to win their final two games before the All-Star break and they took care of business Tuesday night in a win against the Detroit Pistons.
For the second consecutive year, the Lakers are fighting for their playoff lives as they sit in ninth in the Western Conference. Los Angeles is no stranger to the Play-In Tournament, but avoiding it entirely would be much more preferable compared to the alternative.
The front office may not have made a move at the trade deadline, but the Lakers have played better as of late. Christian Wood doesn’t lack any confidence as he believes L.A. is a top-six team in the Western Conference.
“Try to get to the playoffs, that’s it,” Wood said of the Lakers’ goal. “Try to finish off this little back-to-back strong. I think we’re ninth right now in the West, but I think we’re a top-six team. I think if we come back with the attitude to try to stay consistent, stack wins together, I think we’ll be a tough team to beat.”
Head coach Darvin Ham agreed with Wood and acknowledged that he and the players went over different scenarios for how the rest of the 2023-24 season can play out.
“Totally,” Darvin Ham said. “We definitely want to finish in the best possible fashion. Yesterday when we got on the practice floor, we watched film and after the film we put a slide up that gave out some different scenarios of the last 28 games and what our target record needs to be in order to achieve what we’re trying to achieve, whether it’s avoiding having to play two Play-In games or ultimately securing a spot in the playoffs.
“Would we like to go 28-0? Hell yeah. But is that likely? Hell no. Just being real. So you’re just trying to target different scenarios and put that in front of them so they can start moving it around in their brain and say OK, going into the break we got to finish out strong, coming out of the break we got to be all guns blazing heading toward our goal trying to accomplish that.”
The Lakers are about three games out of the sixth seed, so they’ll have a lot of work to do to make up ground after the All-Star break.
Austin Reaves says Lakers are confident in current roster
Los Angeles seemed like a sure-bet to make a trade at the deadline, but instead they stayed pat. However, that didn’t seem to affect Austin Reaves, who said that he and the Lakers are confident in their roster.
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