Los Angeles Lakers season on life support after falling out of Play-In

The Los Angeles Lakers season is officially in peril. Tuesday’s loss against the Dallas Mavericks marked the 44th loss of the season for LA. What’s worse is that they now find themselves from the outside looking in on the Play-In Tournament.

They are currently tied record-wise with the Spurs, but due to conference record, the Spurs hold the tiebreaker. FiveThirtyEight expects this to hold up, as they project the Lakers to end up a game behind the Spurs, thus missing the Play-In Tournament.

Los Angeles Lakers season on life support after falling out of Play-In

The situation is bleak for the purple and gold. They face the hardest remaining schedule and are not certain when they will have their two best players back. Yahoo’s Chris Haynes reported on Tuesday night that Anthony Davis is targeting a Friday or Sunday return if rehab continues to go in the right direction.

However, Lebron James’ status for Thursday’s matchup against the Utah Jazz is still uncertain after missing Tuesday’s game with an ankle injury. At this point, it’s unclear whether or not James will return to the Lakers at all this season.

The Lakers’ season has been extremely frustrating and disappointing for their fans, who entered the season with a team deemed as a title favorite. But with how everything has gone, they will undoubtedly come up extremely short of this expectation.

As of now, the best-case scenario for Los Angeles is getting past the Play-In just to get pummeled by the Phoenix Suns in the first round of the playoffs. But even getting there will be an uphill battle.

No matter how their season ends, the end is near, and it will not be a pretty one. Regardless of what the result ends up being, it will leave them with many questions heading into the offseason, with no easy answers. And at that point, anything could happen.