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Right now, the Los Angeles Lakers are fighting for dear life amid what has been a truly disappointing season. Currently at ninth place in the Western Conference, the Lakers are hoping to improve their current standing in order to secure a spot in the play-in tournament. At this point, even an eighth-placed finish is becoming more and more unlikely after each loss.
For his part, however, Russell Westbrook remains confident in his team's ability to step it up when it matters the most. In his mind, their win-loss record is only a number. As long as they get into the play-in tournament, Russ is adamant that the Lakers will still be able to make some noise come playoff time:
“I just don’t. It doesn’t really mean much,” Westbrook said last week, via Jacob Rude of Silver Screen & Roll. “I just have a different perspective. Last year, I was 17 or 18-33 at some point when I was playing with the Wizards, and I said it didn’t mean s— to me at the time, locked in, every day, one day at a time, and next thing you know you look up and you’re in a different position. To me, nothing different with us. We’re in a position to be in the play-in game… Our job now is to make sure we take one day at a time and that’s it.”
As Westbrook expressed above, it's about taking it one game at a time for the Lakers. Looking at the big picture might be daunting for them at the moment, so the most important thing is to come out with their best every single game.
“Regardless of what position we’re in, we’ve got to beat whoever to get wherever we need to get to. So it don’t matter when you play them. If we play them early, cool. If we play them later, that’s cool too. So to me it really doesn’t matter. Just making sure that our minds are in the right place and we’ve got our energy and effort moving in the right direction.”
Westbrook does have a point here. If the Lakers intend to come out of the West then they're going to have to face the top teams in the conference anyway. To him, it doesn't matter if they face them in the first round or in the Western Conference Finals.
Right now, those teams are the Phoenix Suns, the Golden State Warriors, and the Memphis Grizzlies. These are the Top 3 teams in the West at the moment and this is likely going to be the case when the regular season ends. Facing any of these teams in the first round would be an extremely tough matchup for the Lakers — that is of course under the assumption that they actually secure a spot in the play-in tournament, and then win one or two games to book their spot in the playoffs as the seventh or eighth seed. Needless to say, it's not going to be an easy road for the Lakers by any means.
At the moment, however, Westbrook is just focused on the task at hand. Again, it's about taking it one day at a time.
“Like I keep reiterating, the record at this point, we’re not going to close the gap in one night,” Westbrook said. “As the season goes on, we’ve got 20 or so games left. We have to make sure we find out a way to know how we best play…We just have to lock in and focus on things that are important.”
The Lakers are scheduled to take on the Dallas Mavericks On Tuesday. After that game, they will have only 21 games left for the regular season. LA also has one of the toughest schedules in the league for the rest of the way so as Russ said, they will need to be locked in from this point on.
