The Los Angeles Lakers have been arguably the best team in basketball over the last two months. Including Saturday night’s loss to the Boston Celtics, the Lakers have the best record in the league since Jan. 15 (20-5) with the No. 1 defense and the No. 3 net rating. LeBron James has been essential in this, as he carried the team through weeks without Anthony Davis or Luka Doncic on tail ends of the blockbuster trade.
The most impressive part of the last 25 games for the Lakers is how they’ve fared against the league’s elite teams. They won 12 consecutive games against teams above .500 prior to the Celtics loss and beat teams including the Celtics, Denver Nuggets, New York Knicks and Golden State Warriors.
After Saturday’s loss, James gave an honest assessment of where he feels the Lakers are at, which included both positive and realistic points of view, via Spectrum SportsNet:
“We can compete versus anyone in this league. We’ll be fine. We gotta continue to build our habits though, we’re not where they are. That’s the defending champions and they’ve been playing basketball together for a long time and they’ve got great chemistry and know what they wanna do. We made an acquisition late in the season and we’re still trying to build. We want to get full, that’s the No. 1 objective for us, how can we get full and get all our guys together and see exactly what we look like. But we feel like we can compete versus anyone.”
The biggest blow to this, though, is that LeBron suffered a groin strain in the loss and is expected to miss at least the next 1-2 weeks, meaning he may miss a large portion of the team’s remaining 20 games. He was able to catch the conclusion of the game from the locker room after his injury and was upset having to miss it with his team making a run:
“Yeah, I watched it. It was very frustrating (to not be out there). When I got back here, I looked at the score and it was 99-95. Those are the moments you live for, especially in a game like this and not being out there. But I was cheering on the guys from back here.”
The Lakers certainly could have used James in those final minutes, especially with a chance to close the gap when it was a four-point game. And that’s something that Luka Doncic and the Lakers will have to figure out with James not in the lineup.
L.A. may not be on the Celtics level just yet, but they certainly can consider themselves legitimate contenders entering the stretch run of the regular season.
Jayson Tatum happy both Lakers and Celtics are contenders
Celtics superstar Jayson Tatum spoke after the game against the Lakers on Saturday night about the rivalry between Boston and L.A., saying that the league is in a better place when both teams are contending for a championship.
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