The Los Angeles Lakers have just six games left on the season, and the only thing they have left to do to make the playoffs is beat everybody they have left to play.
At 40-36, Los Angeles is a half-game ahead of the Utah Jazz, who sit 40-37 with five games left to play. The best Los Angeles can do is 46-36, while Utah can get up to 45-37.
The Dallas Mavericks are a piece off the pace, 37-39 with a maximum record of 43-39 left at their disposal. Any combination of three losses or three Lakers' wins would mean the end of the season for the Mavs, so they're in a dire situation.
Los Angeles has games left against some stiff competition, and while they do control their own destiny, Utah has a great chance of taking the final spot as well, as they own the tiebreaker over L.A.
With the pressure on, let's go ahead and take a look at what they have to expect the rest of the way, and what they'll have to do in order to win each game.
Only three teams have won each of their games against the Lakers this season, and the Clippers will be the only team to have the chance to take them down in four meetings.
Unfortunately for the Clippers, their last month of basketball hasn't mirrored their first five, and it seems as if they've gotten lazy.
The Lakers can use their drive to get into the playoffs to beat down the recently careless Clippers, but that might not be the case on Sunday afternoon.
While the Clippers have struggled over the past month, they still seem to have that edge when they play the Lakers (which last happened on February 14th).
The Clippers have won by five, 10 and 24 points so far this season, so it seems as if the Lakers will have their hands full.
Sure, with this Lakers team it's dangerous to make assumptions, but with the Lakers playing at a decent clip as of late, and the playoffs just over the horizon, I don't think they'll have any trouble getting up and feeling motivated against a sub-par team.
Of course, that was about the same thought we had about the Lakers on March 6th when they came back from a 25-point deficit the last time these two teams met.
If they get into another big hole against this team, it could just be the backbreaker, and the wheels could finally fall off this shaky caravan.
With Dwight Howard playing a solid game, both offensively and defensively, the Trail Blazers will have to rely on their perimeter shooting to have a chance to win.
They've shot extremely poorly from the three-point line (just 26 percent) over the course of the past three games, all against teams with a solid post presence on defense.
It seems that whenever Damian Lillard and LaMarcus Aldridge have a solid game together, the Trail Blazers are nearly impossible to stop.
Throw in some rebounding from J.J. Hickson, a solid game from Nicolas Batum and help from the continually underrated Wesley Matthews and this team is a handful, so long as you don't look at the guys riding the pine.
The Lillard-Aldridge combination always tends to be an interesting one, while Kobe Bryant has had three games against Portland in which he's scored at least 27 points.
The last time these two teams met also happened to be the first win of the season series for the Golden State Warriors, all thanks to an explosive first half.
Los Angeles made little cuts into the huge Golden State lead throughout, and even made an attempt at another big comeback in the fourth quarter, but the were just too late kick-starint their comeback machine this time around.
If the Lakers showed up and played a four-quarter game, they would have won. Instead they were lazy in the first half and a win became impossible.
In the only win the Warriors nabbed over the Lakers this season, everybody watched as Klay Thompson and Stephen Curry combined for 47 points with nine combined three-pointers.
The Los Angeles perimeter defense didn't show up until about midway through the third quarter, and by that point it was too late. Klay and Steph had made their presence felt.
Well I probably shouldn't call that an absolute, but it seems pretty likely that the Lakers will be able to take care of the Spurs if Gregg Popovich looks at that number one seed in the Western Conference and scoffs at it.
This close to the end of the season, and with a playoff spot on the line, Los Angeles, and Kobe Bryant specifically, won't let a bunch of bench players beat them.
In a game like this, if the Lakers are still in a position where a loss would give the Utah Jazz a leg-up in the race, it's possible that Popovich decides to stick his toes in the water and play spoiler for the Lakers.
While Pop has shown that he doesn't care about playoff positioning at times, he has shown that there's a bit of quirky fun in his brain. He did decide to employ the Hack-a-Shaq just five seconds into the 2009 season.
If he throws everybody into the starting lineup and they're playing well, he could just leave them in with the hopes of spoiling the Spurs season.
Houston has nothing left to fight for. It'll be the final game of the season for either team, and the Rockets have two things on their mind with a few weeks left in the season. Golden State is just a game ahead of them in the standings, while the Lakers are just three games back.
Of course, Los Angeles doesn't need the Rockets to play for nothing in order to beat them, it's just their best-case scenario.
Los Angeles has struggled with the Houston fast-paced offense in their two losses, but in their win they did so because they made shots. Shots have to fall efficiently in order for the D'Antoni offense to work, and Houston has to realize that they can't defend the perimeter.
In two meetings in Houston this year, Los Angeles has watched as the Rockets offense whizzes right by and leaves them in the dust.
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