It looked like the Los Angeles Lakers were going to have a definitive, impressive win on Sunday night.
The team was up a whopping 23 points against the New Orleans Pelicans at halftime, their biggest halftime lead for the season so far.
LeBron James was playing incredibly well and on his way to scoring 39 points, while the rest of the squad was playing like a well-oiled machine.
In the end, it didn’t matter and the Lakers eventually lost, 116-108.
Lakers now half game behind Pelicans for 9th seed and New Orleans has won both games, own tiebreaker. Also, Lakers just one game above Spurs for 10th seed for play-in game.
— Brad Turner (@BA_Turner) March 28, 2022
With that epic loss, the Lakers are now a half-game behind the Pelicans for the ninth seed in the West.
They are also just one win above the San Antonio Spurs.
That means that the Lakers are very, very close to losing their tenth seed and could fall out of Play-In contention if they continue to lose.
And losing is one of the only things the Lakers have done consistently all year.
Fall From Grace
If the Lakers end up missing the playoffs, it will be a humiliating turn of events that few people saw coming.
When the season began, quite a few people predicted the Lakers could go all the way to the Finals.
They had landed Russell Westbrook in the offseason and compiled a team that included Anthony Davis, Carmelo Anthony, a slew of young talent, and, of course, James.
While not everyone thought they could win the championship, most people agreed they could go far.
Instead, they’re struggling to just stay alive.
No matter if they make the playoffs or not, the team will certainly undergo some major changes during the summer.
The experiment that was the 2021-22 Lakers just hasn’t worked out and it’s time to take a long, hard look at what went wrong – and do whatever it takes to prevent it from happening again.
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