No. 7 Lakers ‘confident’ despite possibility of play-in

The Los Angeles Lakers won’t have home-court advantage in the first round of the Western Conference playoffs. They need help if they’re going to escape the play-in tournament. Worse yet, their invitation to the postseason isn’t even guaranteed.

The defending NBA champions might be in trouble.

It’s very simple for the Lakers: They win most of their games when LeBron James plays and lose most of their games when he doesn’t. With him sidelined for 23 of the Lakers’ last 25 games, they’ve fallen to No. 7 in the West — as low as they have been since late December. The most likely fate for them is playing a game (or two) in the new play-in round that awaits the teams finishing between seventh and 10th in each conference.

“We can’t worry about that,” Lakers coach Frank Vogel said Friday after his team lost in Portland to fall to the seventh spot.

James indicated several days ago that he’s not exactly a proponent of the play-in games, saying the person at NBA headquarters who came up with the idea should be fired. But if the Lakers don’t win most of their remaining five games, the play-in round awaits.

“Wherever we land, we’re confident,“Vogel said, “Obviously, we want to finish in the top six. We still have five games to make up some ground if that’s possible. And we’ll continue to try to win as many of those games as we can.”

MVP race is still Embiid’s to lose

Steph Curry is the game’s greatest shooter. Nikola Jokic and Luka Doncic are the most fun players to watch since Larry Bird. Giannis Antetokounmpo, an Avatar character come to life, does things every night no human has ever done before.

But Joel Embiid is the NBA’s MVP.

He’s the No. 1 player on the No. 1 team in the Eastern Conference, and while the Jazz and the Suns have better records out West, they are much more a sum of their parts. The Sixers are 36-11 with Embiid and they’re able to beat anyone. They’re 9-10 without him.

“If we keep winning and end up the No. 1 seed, I don’t know how you can argue 1/8 against 3/8 Joel Embiid being the MVP,” said his coach, Doc Rivers. “He affected winning as much as anybody else.”