Where does L.A. stack up in the West?
With your Los Angeles Lakers set to kick off their 75th NBA season this year, pundits all over the country are wondering just how far the new-look team will go during the 2022-23 NBA season.
In a recent episode of The Bill Simmons Podcast, Simmons, Joe House and Ryen Russillo discussed their relative pessimism about the club’s prospects.
Let’s take a gander at what DraftKings has to say on the subject. One of the biggest sports betting sites in the game, DraftKings is usually pretty on-point when it comes to taking the temperature of Las Vegas bettors.
As of today, DraftKings has Los Angeles ranked eighth in anticipated win total, setting its over/under at 45.5 games.
Keep in mind, last season, Los Angeles plummeted far below even the play-in cutoff line of the Western Conference’s top 10 teams, going 33-49 just two years after winning it all. To be fair, only two players, All-Stars LeBron James and Anthony Davis, remained from that championship-winning club, after Los Angeles offloaded most of its assets first for guard Dennis Schroder and then for guard Russell Westbrook in successive offseasons, in two of the most epic miscalculations in recent basketball memory.
Botching two seasons (and, possibly, a third now) of what remains of LeBron James’s All-NBA peak hardly seems like behavior meriting a lengthy contract extension, but Jeanie Buss opted to do just that, lengthening team vice president of basketball operations Rob Pelinka’s deal with the club through the 2025-26 season.
DraftKings ranks Los Angeles above the New Orleans Pelicans (44.5 over/under), the Portland Trail Blazers (39.5 over/under), and the Sacramento Kings (33.5 over/under), but below teams like the Memphis Grizzlies and Dallas Mavericks (both listed at a 48.5 over/under). After seeing Sacramento totally exploit L.A.’s two biggest weaknesses (three-point shooting and defense), this writer is bullish on the Kings being significantly better than their current Vegas line.