Anthony Davis said it was very important for the Los Angeles Lakers to win their last two games before the All-Star break. On Tuesday night, they beat the Detroit Pistons and got the job done.

This is the second year in a row that the Lakers are in danger of missing the playoffs. They are currently ninth in the Western Conference. Los Angeles has been to the Play-In Tournament before, but staying away from it altogether would be much better than what would happen otherwise.

The Lakers have been playing better lately, even though the front office didn’t make a deal at the trade deadline. Christian Wood has a lot of faith in Los Angeles and thinks they are one of the top six teams in the Western Conference. 
Wood said that the Lakers’ only goal was to make it to the playoffs. “Try to finish this little back-to-back strong.” I believe we are currently ranked ninth in the West, but I believe we are a top-six team. I believe we can be a tough team to beat if we come back determined to keep up our good play and chain wins together.

Darvin Ham, the head coach, agreed with Wood and said that he and the players talked about different ways the rest of the 2023–24 season could go. 
“Yes,” replied Darvin Ham. “We want to finish in the best way possible.” Before we started practicing yesterday, we watched the film. After the film, we put up a slide that showed different outcomes of the last 28 games and what our goal record needs to be to reach our goals, whether they’re avoiding having to play two Play-In games or making sure they make the playoffs.

“Would you like to go 28-0?” Yes, please. But how likely is that? No way! Being honest. So you’re just trying to show them different scenarios so they can start to think about them and decide, “Okay, we need to finish strong going into the break, and we need to be all guns blazing going towards our goal trying to reach that going out of the break.” 

Right now, the Lakers are three games behind the sixth seed. After the All-Star break, they’ll have to work hard to catch up.