On April 2, Beijing time, in today's home game against the Pelicans, James and The Thick Brow Brother returned from injury, of which James played 40 minutes and got 38 points, 8 rebounds and 4 assists, and the Thick Brow Brother played 36 minutes and got 23 points, 12 rebounds and 6 assists. Helplessly, in the decisive moment of the game, the Lakers attacked the power outage, and with James's equalizing three-point iron, the Lakers finally lost to the Pelicans 111:114.
After this game, the Lakers' record reached 31 wins and 46 losses, ranking 11th in the West, three wins behind the ninth-place Pelicans and one win behind the tenth-place Spurs. Now that everyone has 5 games left, the Pelicans have locked up a playoff spot, and the Lakers and Pelicans will be fighting for the last playoff spot.
Considering that the Lakers are currently one win behind the Spurs and have a disadvantage in the same record, there is only one possibility left for the Lakers to enter the playoffs, that is, to win 2 more games than the Spurs in the remaining 5 games. What is the probability of achieving this? Let's compare the rest of the fixtures between the two sides.
The Spurs have 5 games left: Blazers, Nuggets, Timberwolves, Warriors, And Lone Rangers, with the Blazers being the weakest. If the Spurs win 4 of them, they will advance to the playoffs; if the Spurs win 3 of them, the Lakers will need to win all of the last 5; if the Spurs win 2 of them, then the Lakers need to win 4 of the last 5.
Let's look at the Lakers' remaining 5 games: Nuggets, Suns, Warriors, Thunder, Nuggets. Among them, only the Thunder are weaker, the Lakers are expected to win, and the remaining three teams have a record of the top six in the West, and it is difficult for the Lakers to win without releasing water from the opponent.
So the Lakers still have a theoretical possibility of promotion, after today's game, Lakers head coach Vogel also talked about the team's current predicament, Vogel said: "We have become extremely difficult to play in the playoffs, we can only win more games." Today is similar to the playoffs, so James and Thick Brow need to play more. ”
From today's game, we should also see that even if Zhan Mei is in the right attitude and plays seriously, there is a high probability that the play-offs will not be able to beat the Pelicans. The psychological impact of this loss on the Lakers, I am afraid that by the moment when the regular season is over, it will still not be dissipated.
For the Lakers this season, we still have one thing to look forward to, that is, James hit the scoring king, the current James averages 30.3 points per game, a slight advantage ahead of alphabet brother and Embiid, James still needs to play 2 games to qualify for the selection of scoring champions.