The Los Angeles Lakers have loads of issues the place June’s NBA championship is anxious. However its winter counterpart? The Lakers have at all times taken care of enterprise on that entrance. Final season, they went on a dominant 6-0 run by way of the NBA’s inaugural In-Season Event to say the trophy, and so they opened this season with two extra wins within the revamped NBA Cup. In complete, that made them 8-0 in match video games and the ultimate undefeated group within the occasion’s younger historical past.
Effectively, a lot for that spotless document.
On Tuesday, the Phoenix Suns emphatically handed the Lakers their first-ever match loss, 127-100, behind 72 mixed factors from the star trio of Kevin Durant, Bradley Beal and Devin Booker. The top of the streak, in itself, is little greater than a bummer for the Lakers. Inside the grand scheme of this 12 months’s match, although, it is a potential backbreaker.
There’s now a three-way tie atop West Group B. The Lakers, Suns and Spurs are all 2-1. Nonetheless, because the second tiebreaker is level differential, the blowout nature of this particular loss is kind of significant. Because it stands, the Suns have a 35-point edge on the Lakers when it comes to level differential at plus-19. Certain, the 2-1 Spurs might blow out the Suns on Dec. 3, knocking Phoenix all the way down to 2-2 and placing the Lakers up towards an opponent that they’ve a head-to-head tiebreaker over, however that would not essentially resolve their issues.
Why? As a result of the Lakers nonetheless have one other group play sport left, and it is towards the very best group within the Western Convention, the Oklahoma Metropolis Thunder. The Thunder are 1-1 of their group, however have a gimme left on their very own group play slate within the type of a Dec. 3 residence sport towards the hapless Utah Jazz. Ought to the Lakers lose to the Thunder, they’d fall to 2-2 with a horrific level differential, successfully knocking them out of the match.
Even when they beat the Thunder, they’d both want the Spurs to knock off the Suns or to win a tiebreaker towards the opposite non-group winners within the Western Convention. That might show problematic due to level differential. The two-1 Mavericks in West Group C have a plus-41 differential. In the event that they deal with enterprise on their residence ground towards the Grizzlies on Dec. 3, they’re all however assured to be the Western Convention’s wild card group due to that big level differential.
Primarily, the Lakers went from “undefeated in your entire historical past of this match” to “getting ready to elimination” within the span of 1 disastrous second half towards the Suns. Certain, there have been extra damaging single losses in regular-season historical past the place playoff seeding is anxious, however from a match perspective? This was one of many extra important group play defeats we have seen but.
