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What do the Lakers want? That’s not a question I like asking, but as the final day of the NBA 2025-26 regular season gets underway, it’s a question we must ask.
Here are the playoff scenarios, and what might happen.
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First:
The Rockets have two possible opponents: Lakers, Nuggets
The Rockets can’t change anything about their seeding. They’re 5th. The loss to Minnesota’s B Team guaranteed it.
The Nuggets have a record of 53-28. The Lakers have a record of 52-29. Today the Nuggets play the Spurs, who will apparently rest everyone of note. The Lakers will play the Jazz, who are 22-59. I’m not sure if a loss changes much about their draft odds, as they can’t “catch” Washington, Indiana, or Brooklyn in the loss column. They’re going to finish with the 4th or 5th worst record in the NBA no matter what happens today. The Kings can “pass” the Jazz in the loss column if they win and the Jazz lose. The two teams both have 22 wins. Being 5th greatly increases the odds of getting a pick that falls down as far as seventh in the draft. You have to expect both teams want to lose.
The Lakers own the tiebreaker over the Nuggets, meaning if their records end up identical, that is, Laker win, Denver loss, the Lakers will move up to 3rd in the Western Conference and play the Timberwolves.
If Denver wins, everything stays the same, Rockets play Lakers. Denver holds on to 3rd place in the West due to a superior record. It won’t matter whether LA wins or loses, as the Lakers can’t catch Denver in the wins column if the Nuggets get a win over the Spurs.
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Denver can’t really control anything, though, if the Lakers lose. They’ll still be ahead of LA in the win column, win or lose.
Then there’s the Spurs. Do the Spurs want to keep Denver where they are, on OKC’s side of the playoff bracket in future rounds? If San Antonio thinks Denver is a tougher opponent for OKC than a Laker team missing its two best players, then they definitely want to keep the Nuggets at 3rd. They can do that by losing to Denver.
So this is simply a brilliant situation in which every team playing with seeding at…
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Publish date : 2026-04-12 19:18:00
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