Los Angeles Lakers fans have suffered emotional whiplash all season long. The team has vacillated between looking like a championship contender and looking like the same team that got bounced in the first round of the playoffs in five games last year. It seemed like Rob Pelinka had found a cure when he traded for Luka Dončić, but after some tantalizing early returns from the new era of Lakers basketball, injuries and a team-wide defensive slippage have contributed to what's been a pretty mediocre four weeks.
The aim of this team has always been to get right by time the playoffs roll around, and with less than a week left in the regular season, it appears that the Lakers have done that. Every guy that gets major minutes is injury-free, and the team has bounced back from a 3-7 stretch to go 5-2 against a difficult schedule.
Sunday night's win over the Thunder was L.A.'s most impressive win of the season, a 27-point road dismantling of the West's top team. That just doesn't happen to the Thunder, not this year. OKC came into the game 34-5 at home, and those five losses came by a total of 48 points. The Lakers just added over 56 percent to that total.
L.A. now has a stranglehold on the third seed behind the Thunder and the Rockets. They're two games up in the loss column on the next five teams with just four to play, and as we outlined last week, they basically have the tiebreaker over everyone that's chasing them. Win two of the final four games and third in the West should be locked up, which would be a momentous achievement in JJ Redick's first season as head coach.
In an odd scheduling twist, the Lakers and Thunder will again face off at the Paycom Center on Tuesday night in a sort of delayed single-location back-to-back. Mark Daigneault's team will be anxious for revenge, but the Thunder are locked into the No. 1 seed no matter what happens. This game really matters for the Lakers, for the following three reasons.
Lakers-Thunder is critical for L.A. locking down the No. 3 seed
We spoke above about how, standings-wise, the Lakers are looking good for the third seed, but it's far from a guarantee, because the schedule in the final four games is tough.
First is another game against the team with the best record in the NBA. One night later, they travel to Dallas for what's sure to be a highly emotional return for Luka, the Mavericks' unwitting prodigal son. Dallas will be desperate to secure the final play-in spot, in addition to wanting badly to win in the first meeting between Luka and Anthony Davis in an attempt to prove that they're not a laughingstock for making that deal in the first place.
Two nights later, the Lakers host the Rockets, who have been one of the hottest teams in the league. L.A. did beat them at home just over a week ago, but Houston is always tough and will likely be able to clinch the 2-seed with a win here.
Finally, the Lakers travel to Portland to end the regular season against the Trail Blazers. Don't laugh, because although they've been eliminated from playoff contention, the Blazers have been getting great play from Shaedon Sharpe and Deni Avdija, and they have a winning record at home.
Beating the Thunder again, even if the Lakers don't win another game, would force the rest of the Western Conference contenders to win out to jump them, which probably isn't going to happen for more than one team at most.
The Lakers need to prove that Sunday's win wasn't a fluke
The NBA season is long, and weird results happen. Take the Hawks, who've beaten the East-leading Cavs twice but also lost twice to the Wizards, who are basically a Division III team. That's like winning a land war in Russia and then losing a sea battle against the Kansas National Guard.
The Lakers have to feel confident after thumping the Thunder, but if they turn around two nights later and get blown out, it will erase all the goodwill they earned on Sunday. They need to prove it wasn't a fluke, because even winning one game at OKC in the playoffs would mean that they would still have to hold serve three straight times at home, which will be a tall order. Win two on the road and they have some margin for error.
Every team wants to be peaking when the playoffs hit, and by beating the Thunder again, it would show that the Lakers are doing just that. This would be their third straight win and their fifth in six games, a stretch that would include three wins against the top two teams in the West. No playoff matchup would seem insurmountable then.
Even Lakers fans with the biggest rose-colored glasses (and Crypto.com Arena is full of celebrities, so we've seen some big pairs) had to know that it would take Luka time to jell with LeBron James and the rest of his new teammates. A win on Tuesday would be confirmation that everything is right on schedule.
The Lakers shot 22-40 from 3-point range on Sunday. That figure is probably unsustainable against the league's top defense. It's not like they needed all of those points in a 27-point win, but it would be good to know that they could beat them without such a hot shooting night.
The Thunder can't be totally confident after last year's disappointment, and another loss to the Lakers would seriously rattle them at the worst possible time
Most of the Lakers' reasons for wanting to win are selfish, as they should be, but beating OKC twice in three days would also crack the Western Conference playoff race wide open. As of this moment, the Thunder are -150 on FanDuel to represent the West in the NBA Finals. Minus odds against a conference field that features the Lakers, Warriors, Rockets, Wolves, Nuggets and Clippers shows just how highly the betting public thinks of likely MVP Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and his team, but the chinks in OKC's once-unbreakable armor are beginning to show.
Public confidence in the Thunder would plummet with another loss to the Lakers, but it would also cause the team to have serious doubts about themselves. All year those players have heard, "Cool story bro, prove it in the playoffs," and all year they've continued to win. Playing their worst stretch of basketball right before the postseason will cause those seeds of self-doubt to grow.
OKC has always bounced back from a loss this year, but they failed to do so after getting beaten by the Rockets on Friday. This is only the second time all season that the Thunder have lost two games in a row, and these defeats were by double digits.
The Thunder haven't dropped three straight since last April, which has an asterisk because they were missing SGA with a quad injury. Still, the timing of this potential three-game skid would coincide with that one, and despite securing the No. 1 seed last year as well, the Thunder were out in the Western Conference semis, getting knocked out in five by, oh that's right, Luka Dončić. If the boogeyman could hang another 30-spot on them in their house, it could shake them their core.