RealGM

Year 22, He still has enough in the tank but time is going..
New Coach JJ Redick
and
LBJ is playing with his son Bronny

Hard to envision them passing the first round just yet. Hopefully, Redick's coaching couples well with health and maybe a good rookie campaign from Knecht and creates some surprise.

Winning play-in games to make the top 8 would be a big accomplishment for this team IMO. My guess is they finish 9th or 10th and fail to make the top 8.

Sake of argument:

Thunder are better and should be the 1-seed.

Mavericks are probably better, although they seem temperamental.

Healthy Grizzlies should finish with a higher seed, but 2023 gives me faith in the postseason Lakers.

We expect the Nuggets to finish higher, but they keep getting worse, so would not feel terrible about that matchup.

Timberwolves are set up for better regular season success. Unclear how a matchup with the Lakers would go in the postseason.

No one else feels overly concerning or inherently likely to finish above the Lakers, so I could see a reasonable seed range of 5-9 with an outside shot to win a series.

Unfortunately, they are worse than Sacramento and Phoenix in the Pacific and right next to the Warriors while being ahead of the Clippers.

Other teams out West include Minnesota, Oklahoma City and Denver [Regular Season, lower on their PS] while Dallas is another team who is better on paper during the Regular Season.

That puts the Lakers in the Play-In for me, 7-10 seed [competing with Golden State, New Orleans and Houston].

We all know this team will start around .500 and everyone will be clamouring for trades in this forum.

Eh, they were better than Sacramento last season. Maybe Demar moves them ahead, but maybe going from Ham to JJ similarly elevates the Lakers.

And I will never respect this iteration of the Suns.

tsherkin wrote:Hard to envision them passing the first round just yet. Hopefully, Redick's coaching couples well with health and maybe a good rookie campaign from Knecht and creates some surprise.

It’s that + some sort of trade.

PistolPeteJR wrote:

tsherkin wrote:Hard to envision them passing the first round just yet. Hopefully, Redick's coaching couples well with health and maybe a good rookie campaign from Knecht and creates some surprise.

It’s that + some sort of trade.

Yeah I mean there is a lot of time, right? So we shall see what, if anything, happens.

If Lebron plays similar to last season, I see no way the Lakers aren't in the playoffs.

And I think they were very unlucky vs Denver in that 1st round.

Been off this board on hiatus for a while, but we are back!

As for this thread’s original topic, voted R1. I don’t think this team added any needle movers from a sheer talent standpoint. We’ll see how good the offense ends up being (heading into April, they certainly looked the part before tailing off against Denver) - but they’re still too over reliant on AD defensively.

Redick should help if he’s any semblance of a net neutral coach, but there’s nothing to move the needle against a team like Denver / Dallas (let alone a OKC or Wolves - which I think are harder matchups)

Jaxson and Rui have gotten CPU upgrades it seems so far lol.

Still looks like a 25 pt per game scorer , crazy

He's moving well out there

IG2 wrote:He's moving well out there

I’d say alright, but it’s half one of game 1/82

Dlo already in playoff form I can see smh....

Rui looking very solid so far....

I really like our activity crashing the glass, but I dont like the 3 point jacking up

3/21 from 3....missing some wide open ones thanks to Reaves and Dlo

AD is outrageous.

Fadeaway_J wrote:AD is outrageous.

This seems like the year where AD clearly becomes our #1

We need this from him to be a contender/peak version of our team

So pissed off at our shooting tonight

nzahir wrote:

Fadeaway_J wrote:AD is outrageous.

This seems like the year where AD clearly becomes our #1

We need this from him to be a contender/peak version of our team

So pissed off at our shooting tonight

I'm not bothered considering they won fairly comfortably despite shooting well below their usual levels.

Lakers are going to be dominant based off this one game.

Not many teams will beat them at this intensity with average shooting.