The Los Angeles Lakers are seen as underdogs in their first-round playoff series against the Memphis Grizzlies, but sports pundit Nick Wright doesn’t see it that way.
In fact, Wright not only has the Lakers winning their first-round series, but he also has the team going all the way to the 2023 NBA Finals and winning the championship over the Philadelphia 76ers.
It’s quite the prediction, and fans should definitely take it with a grain of salt, but that doesn’t mean they can’t also get a bit excited about the lofty premonition.
“The King (LeBron James) stay the king for ring number five over Joel Embiid and James Harden,” said Wright.
It has been an incredibly long road to the playoffs for James, Anthony Davis and the Lakers. The squad got off to a horrific 2-10 start earlier in the season and had to claw its way back into the playoff conversation for the rest of the campaign.
That journey was made even more difficult due to injuries to both James and Davis that kept each of them out of the lineup for significant portions of the season. Despite those injuries and big changes to the roster before the trade deadline in February, the Lakers managed to do the improbable by becoming a playoff team.
Thanks to their overtime thriller against the Minnesota Timberwolves in the play-in tournament, the Lakers are now battle-tested and ready.
They’re also 11-4 over their last 15 games.
While NBA championships are often won by the best team in a given season, they are also often won by teams that simply get hot and hit their stride at the right time. Given what fans have seen out of the Lakers over the last month or so, a real argument can be made that they are hitting their stride at the exact right time.
If Davis and James can lead the way and dominate on a nightly basis and the rest of the roster can provide valuable support on both ends of the floor, the Lakers might have a very legitimate shot at shocking the world and winning another NBA title.
It’s a far way off, but there’s no reason to not start visualizing it now.
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