Last season, the Lakers only won a whopping 17 games. So far this season, they’ve won 7. With only needing 10 more wins to match last years total, let’s take a look at when they can hit that mark. The next few games will be tough with one matchup against OKC and two against Golden State. If they’re lucky, they’ll come away with one win out of their next three games. That leaves 9 more to go.
The team then goes on a road trip to visit New Orleans, Chicago, Toronto, and Memphis. It would be reasonable to see them winning 2 out of four there, likely against New Orleans and they could pull out a win against Chicago or Memphis. If they get two wins on the road trip, their total will be up to 10 on the season.
They’ll return home for one game against the Jazz, who they lost to already this season. However, both teams are evenly matched as far as the standings go. The Lakers will have home court advantage, and they haven’t blown us away with wins at home, but they’ve done okay for themselves. They didn’t lose to the Jazz by much when they were away, so it’s expected that they can win this home game.
Houston is the next destination, and they beat the team before, but with this being a Rockets home game, they’ll likely drop this one. The next two home games are against Phoenix and New York. It’s very likely that they win both of these. Neither opponent is above .500 at this point. This will hopefully bring the Lakers up to 13 wins.
This will take forever if we continue going game by game. after those two home games, the Lakers will be on the road from December 12th until they return home for the Christmas game against the Clippers. That’s a long stretch, and they likely won’t hit 17 wins during that time.
Expect the Lakers to come close to that 17 win mark some time in January, which is much sooner than the season end in April. This Lakers team looks promising and if they hit those 17 wins by January, there’s no doubt they’ll look greatly improved by the end of the season, which is all us Lakers fans really want to see.
It’s strange because 17 wins have never felt so important. Anything more than that will be considered a success. I’d go as far to say this team is a success already. They’re a fun team to watch and it just looks like they’re enjoying the game so much more. Luke Walton deserves a lot of credit, and so do the players. Cheers to the high likelihood that this team will do much better than they did last year.
