The Los Angeles Lakers will enter 2019-20 with a better chance to win the franchise's 17th championship than any season in recent memory. Just because they're among a handful of teams with legitimate championship aspirations, though, hardly means the Lakers are poised for a dominant regular season.

ESPN forecasts Los Angeles to finish fifth in the West this season, behind the Denver Nuggets, LA Clippers, Houston Rockets, and Utah Jazz. There's scant separation among that quintet in terms of wins and losses, though, an indicator of just how wide open the championship window is with training camp fast approaching. The Lakers are projected to go 51-31, while the Nuggets and Clippers tie for the conference lead with an expected 54-28 record. ESPN predicts the Rockets and Jazz will finish with 53 and 52 wins, respectively.

Regular-season standings only matter so much when it comes to postseason prognostications. As more teams prioritize the health and rest of players over the 82-game grind, season-long performance has been less indicative of which teams enter the playoffs with the most realistic odds of hoisting the Larry O'Brien Trophy.

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That's long been especially true of teams featuring LeBron James, whose time-honored strategy of conserving energy for the postseason has often led to disappointing results over the meat of the NBA schedule. Of course, that was hardly a problem during his last stint with the Cleveland Cavaliers, when they failed to finish atop the Eastern Conference three out of four seasons but advanced to the NBA Finals every year regardless.

Los Angeles, coming off a depressing 2018-19 campaign, revamped its roster over the offseason, trading for Anthony Davis and surrounding he and James with a group of solid, unspectacular veterans.