The Los Angeles Lakers are becoming a major problem for the rest of the NBA. Winners of 16 of their past 19 games, L.A. is now 17 games above .500 and tied for the 2-seed in the Western Conference, a feat nobody would have believed at the outset of the season.
The regular season is one thing, the playoffs are another, and when you're the Lakers, success is only measured in championships. Does this team have what it takes to actually make a run to the title? We're only 23 regular season games from finding out.
No team is invincible, and even the Cleveland Cavaliers and Oklahoma City Thunder, the top two teams in the league all season, will have questions to answer come playoff time. For the Lakers, there are four big ones that should tell us everything we need to know.
Have the new-look Lakers had enough time together to be at their best?
Luka Doncic had a slow start in the purple and gold, but he's slowly finding his groove as he looks to prove that his calf injury is far behind him. Doncic and his new teammates have already had some magical moments together, and the team has been winning, but it's fair to wonder if less than half a season is enough to fully coalesce into a championship-worthy team.
Real basketball doesn't work like fantasy basketball. Yes, pairing Doncic with LeBron James sounds amazing, and all signs point to this partnership actually being amazing. Still, it takes time to learn each other's habits and preferences on the court, and that goes double for JJ Redick, who has a small window to completely rework his offense and defense to account for the loss of Anthony Davis (and Max Christie!) and the addition of Doncic. Given an entire offseason, the job will be much easier. Doing it on the fly, not so much.
The Lakers' future is extremely bright, there can be no doubt about that. Can they reach peak lumens by this spring with so little time to prepare? We shall see.
Will a patchwork center position be the Lakers' downfall?
If there's one clear weakness on this Lakers roster, it's at center. That's what happens when you trade away Anthony Davis, folks! And though nobody can blame Rob Pelinka for pulling the trigger on the trade that shook the sports world, the fact remains that for now at least, the Lakers have one of the weakest sets of centers in the league.
Trading for Mark Williams was supposed to fix that, but for reasons we may never fully understand, that one fell through. Finding a true starting center this offseason will be one of Pelinka's two mandates (the other being to sign Doncic to a long-term extension). That's to ensure the Lakers' status as contenders in the long term, but it won't help them this year.
The Lakers have been thriving with Jaxson Hayes and Trey Jemison III, and Rui Hachimura playing in small ball lineups. Will that hold up when Nikola Jokic is awaiting in a seven-game series? How about in a grudge match against Anthony Davis?
Can the defense possibly keep this up?
What the Lakers are doing on defense defies all basketball logic. They've ranked between 20th and 25th in defensive rating for pretty much the entire season, but in the past few weeks, they've transformed into the best defense in the league.
This has somehow occurred without Davis, their perennial Defensive Player of the Year candidate, and while the trio of Doncic, James, and Austin Reaves have shared the floor for a majority of the time. Those three, at least at this point in their respective careers, are not exactly thought of as defensive stoppers.
James has been a huge driver of this improvement. Few people believed that he couldn't play defense anymore (at least in short stretches), but rather most believed that he just wasn't willing to put the effort in on that end at the age of 40. Who among us can't relate? A switch has been flipped, though, because James has been a switchable shutdown demon since even before Davis was traded.
Will James still have enough in the tank to keep this up for the rest of the regular season and four rounds of postseason play? It would be unprecedented for a player his age, but that's never a word that's stopped him before.
How will JJ Redick handle his first postseason?
Most NBA insiders and fans wondered how Redick would get more out of what was essentially the same lineup that got Darvin Ham fired. The roster looks very different now from when Redick took over, that much is true. But even before the additions of Dorian Finney-Smith and Doncic, Redick was already working wonders.
The fact that Redick has been able to adapt to a roster that has evolved throughout the season is a testament to his coaching ability. It's also why he's not just a viable Coach of the Year candidate — it's why he's one of the favorites to win the award.
That ability to adjust and adapt will be put to the test in the crucible of the playoffs. Redick could be matching wits with Mike Malone, Ty Lue, Mark Daigneault (last year's COTY winner), Ime Udoka, Steve Kerr — the list goes on and on. When each team becomes so familiar with each other, will he be able to win that chess match? It will be fascinating to find out.