There seem to be two schools of thought regarding the Los Angeles Lakers’ prospects this season. One group of people feels the Lakers are, at best, a play-in team, while the other group feels they’re being underrated and could even compete with almost any team, especially in the Western Conference.
But it seems like the second group of pundits is smaller than the first group. In particular, Brian Windhorst doesn’t seem to think highly of the team’s chances of having a successful season.
In response to NBA.com’s annual survey of executives across the league in which they said the Lakers are the toughest team to predict, he said the Lakers are easy to predict and that they’ll be merely a play-in team.
Windhorst’s reasoning is that LeBron James and Anthony Davis can’t possibly stay as healthy as they did last season. After a few injury-riddled seasons for both, James played in 71 games while Davis appeared in 76 games.
Los Angeles has been in the play-in tournament in three of the last four seasons. Last season, it won 47 games, but it should be noted that then-head coach Darvin Ham didn’t settle on a consistent starting lineup that made sense until midseason. After that, the team took off a bit by winning 23 of its last 33 games.
Additionally, there were many games the Lakers lost to inferior teams in which they seemed to mail it in. If they had simply won four of those games, they would’ve finished fourth place in the Western Conference and possibly had a pathway to the Western Conference Finals. In that scenario, the conversation surrounding the team would be much different right now.
This article originally appeared on LeBron Wire: Brian Windhorst makes a grim prediction about the Lakers
