The New Orleans Pelicans won twice on Sunday. By defeating the Los Angeles Lakers in a 123-95 blowout, they managed to pull even with the Portland Trail Blazers at 25-36 for the No. 10 seed in the Western Conference. That's not insignificant in the short term. Pelicans GM David Griffin is fighting for his job. He made an aggressive move for CJ McCollum at the trade deadline in large part to make it into the top 10. But the big, long-term victory has less to do with their win and more to do with the Lakers' loss.
The Pelicans acquired the Lakers' 2022 first-round pick as part of the Anthony Davis trade, but last offseason, they shipped it to Memphis in a cap-clearing deal that also netted them Jonas Valanciunas. At the time, the Lakers looked like one of the best teams in the NBA. That pick was supposed to land in the late 20s, so the Grizzlies didn't mind when the Pelicans demanded a top-10 protection on that selection. There was just no way a Lakers team with Davis and LeBron James would be picking in the top 10, right?
Well… Sunday's defeat dropped the Lakers to 27-33. They have lost five of their past six games and have an embarrassing 6-14 record in their past 20. The preseason Western Conference favorites are now a mere 2.5 games from slipping to No. 11 in the standings and out of the play-in round entirely. If they slip out of the play-in round, the Pelicans are almost certain to keep that pick.
It was practically inconceivable mere months ago, but with Davis sidelined and 22 games remaining in their regular season, it's starting to look increasingly possible that the Lakers will miss the play-in round entirely and see their season end without even the possibility of playoff redemption. So let's dig into what the next month-and-a-half of basketball might look like for the Lakers and their competition for a top-10 seed.
Where do the Lakers stand?
A 27-33 record through 60 games would be precarious for a typical play-in candidate. The Lakers are not typical. They are the NBA's marquee franchise. As such, the league tends to backload its schedule as much as possible to avoid conflict with the NFL. They've done so to an extreme degree this season. The final 22 opponents on the Lakers' schedule have won a combined 57.1 percent of their games.
That's the hardest remaining schedule left in basketball. Only nine of those games will be in Los Angeles, and technically, only eight will be home games as one road matchup is against the Clippers. Those same Clippers lead the Lakers by 3.5 games in the standings and have already clinched the head-to-head tiebreaker against them, so jumping back into the top eight seems extremely unlikely.
Reinforcements don't appear to be coming any time soon. Davis could miss another four or five weeks. Kendrick Nunn is set to "ramp up," but we've been hearing that all year. Avery Bradley has missed the past three games with a knee injury. For reasons that remain unclear, Austin Reaves was on the floor with roughly two minutes remaining in Sunday's blowout loss and left the game due to an apparent injury. The Lakers are already dangerously thin. James himself has missed 17 games, roughly 28 percent of his team's total. If that trend holds and he's forced to miss another five or six games down the stretch due to various knee and ankle ailments, those games would be almost certain losses for the Lakers.
All told, FiveThirtyEight projects the Lakers to finish with a 34-48 record. At best, that's cutting it very close. At worst? That knocks the Lakers out of the top 10. In ninth place right now, the Lakers would need two teams to pass them to fall out of the top 10. So who would replace them? Let's take a look at the candidates.
Who could jump the Lakers?
New Orleans Pelicans
The Pelicans were already starting to figure things out before the deadline, but McCollum's arrival has supercharged their offense. New Orleans is scoring 102.8 points per 100 plays in half-court settings since McCollum arrived, according to Cleaning the Glass. That ranks fourth in the NBA over that span and would rank first across the entire season. When both McCollum and Brandon Ingram are on the floor, the Pelicans are scoring a blistering 121.4 points per 100 possessions, which would put them in the 98th percentile league-wide. New Orleans is probably going to cool off a bit in the next six weeks, but right now, they're scoring at such an impressive clip that winning enough games to pass the Lakers seems somewhat likely.
The Pelicans currently trail the Lakers by 2.5 games in the standings, but FiveThirtyEight projects them to finish with a 36-46 record. That's two games better than their 34-48 Lakers projection. Their remaining schedule is right around league-average as their opponents have won 49.6 percent of their games, but the games that will truly determine whether or not the Pelicans can pass the Lakers will come on March 27 and April 1. The Lakers and Pelicans play each other twice in less than a week. If the Lakers win both, they pick up two games and the head-to-head tiebreaker. If New Orleans wins either, by virtue of their win on Sunday, they'll have the tiebreaker with a 2-1 record against the Lakers. If they get it, they should have a decent chance of sneaking up to No. 9.
Portland Trail Blazers
If the Blazers could concede their position in the play-in race, they'd do it. Portland wants nothing to do with the postseason. The Blazers tore their roster down to the studs at the deadline hoping to reload in the offseason with two lottery picks: their own and New Orleans'. The higher the Blazers rise, the more damage they do to their own pick and the likelier it becomes that the Pelicans jump into the top four on lottery night and keep their pick. The Blazers really, really want to lose.
Their youngsters just aren't cooperating. The Blazers are 4-2 since their flurry of deadline moves. Anfernee Simons is averaging nearly 27 points per game in that span and perhaps more impressively, Justise Winslow, whom neither the Heat nor the Clippers could turn into a remotely effective scorer, is averaging 13.6 points on fairly efficient shooting numbers across the board.
Fortunately for the Blazers, circumstances are likely to enforce their plan to tank. Jusuf Nurkic is expected to miss at least four weeks with plantar fasciitis. In tanking terms, that means he's probably out for the season. Damian Lillard likely won't be back either, and now Winslow is dealing with an Achilles issue. At a certain point, the Blazers are just going to run out of healthy bodies to put on the court. The Blazers have also vastly outperformed their point-differential over the past few months. They are 12-14 since the calendar flipped to 2022, but their minus-5.5 net rating suggests they really should have lost three or four more games in that span. As such, FiveThirtyEight projects a 31-51 record for the Blazers when the dust settles. That will probably knock them out of the play-in round.
San Antonio Spurs
The numbers suggest that the Pelicans have a strong chance of passing the Lakers and the Blazers probably don't. The swing team here is the Spurs. FiveThirtyEight has them in a dead heat with the Lakers at a projected 34-48 record. If that is how this plays out, the outcome of next Monday's matchup between the two becomes essential. Right now, the Lakers hold a 2-1 head-to-head advantage over the Spurs. However, on March 7, they face off for the fourth and final time in San Antonio. A Spurs win ties the head-to-head record and pushes the two down the league's list of tiebreakers. Neither is a division leader, so a division title cannot break the tie, and as the two are not in the same division, division record won't apply at all. That would force them to the league's fourth tiebreaker: conference record. Right now, the Lakers are 15-21 against the Western Conference while the Spurs are 14-20. Should they wind up tied in that column as well, the fifth tiebreaker would be record against Western Conference playoff teams.
All of this tiebreaker talk assumes that the Spurs can reach the Lakers in the standings. All things considered, they're fairly well-positioned to do so. They have the NBA's ninth-easiest remaining schedule, and 12 of their 21 remaining games are at home. Their plus-0.4 net rating is 2.3 points higher than the Lakers', and they are not dealing with any significant injuries. Their only meaningful absence is Derrick White, who was a major part of their meager success earlier in the season but was dealt to Boston at the deadline.
It's too early to render a verdict on the trade, but thus far, it has actually helped the Spurs a fair but. San Antonio went 4-1 in its first five post-deadline games with DeJounte Murray averaging 26 points and 12 assists with the extra spacing White's absence enabled. If that trend holds, the Spurs aren't going to go away quietly. We all know how Gregg Popovich feels about the Lakers. If he has a chance to knock them out of the postseason, he's going to do everything in his power to seize it.
The verdict
How confident are you that a 37-year-old LeBron James can play in all 22 games left on the schedule? If you're pretty confident in that, you should probably assume that the Lakers hold their spot in the top 10. Among the four teams fighting for those two final spots, James is the only player consistently capable of lifting a team to wins it doesn't otherwise deserve. If he needs to score 40 three times in two weeks to get the Lakers into the play-in round, he can probably do it.
But if you expect his knee to get sore or his back to start acting up, things get much dicier for the Lakers. No team in the play-in hunt is more reliant on one player than the Lakers are on James. If he has to miss five games, that's probably five more Laker losses. If he's not engaged in the play-in chase and prefers to preserve his body, those games the Lakers need him to snatch out of thin air become far less winnable.
The Lakers are teetering on the edge of disaster. James is hanging on to the edge of the cliff with one hand and gripping the Lakers in the other. If he lets go, the season is over.
