The Lakers’ postseason became murkier as soon as Luka Doncic and Austin Reaves went down with regular-season-ending injuries.
Suddenly, the Lakers went from one of the NBA’s hottest teams to viewed as the most vulnerable among the top-six seeds in the Western Conference.
The type of team that others would try to maneuver to play in the first round with the hopes that the matchup would create an easier pathway to the second round.
But coach JJ Redick wanted to ensure that what the Lakers have accomplished this season can be appreciated for what it has been.
Yes, the Lakers entered the season with the goal of winning a championship.
Those are the innate expectations of being the Lakers — from the front office, coaches and players, all the way to the fans.
And even though the likelihood of that happening took a significant dip, the Lakers will still have a shot until they’re knocked out of the playoffs.
But before the regular season ended, Redick didn’t want the journey of 2025-26 to get lost even though the future is uncertain.
“Let’s not discredit what this group did for the regular season, regardless of what happens in the playoffs,” Redick said before his team’s final regular-season game against the Jazz on Sunday. “Because to clinch homecourt and to win 52 games, possibly 53 games, and deal with the amount of adversity we had — not just with injuries, but again, with the loudness that is just gonna be out there with our team, ’cause it’s the Lakers. It’s a credit to our players. It’s a credit to our staff for just persevering and just keeping our head down and doing the work.
“Coached a bunch of different ways this year. Our players had to adjust, players made sacrifices. A lot of these guys, as I’ve talked about, are in contract years. And it’s been, for everybody, a really great opportunity to grow as players, as coaches, as people.”
Even before Sunday’s regular-season finale, the Lakers were guaranteed to finish as a top-four seed in the West and have homecourt advantage for their first-round playoff series.
They entered Sunday with their most wins in an 82-game regular season since 2010-11, when they won 57 games after winning back-to-back NBA titles.
And they had the success they did during the regular season despite Doncic playing 64 games.
Despite James missing the first 14 games of the season with sciatica.
Despite Reaves playing a career-low 51 games.
This Lakers team was built with a vision that included their best three players in Doncic, James and Reaves leading the way.
But the Big 3 played just 560 minutes together across 29 games this season — just 137 minutes and eight more games than 2024-25 despite having the entire season to be together.
“I’m extremely proud of our team, our players and our coaches for dealing with the entire NBA season,” Redick said. “For maybe one or two teams a year, they don’t have a lot of ups and downs, and the roller coaster is fairly flat. But for most every team in the NBA, your ability to bounce back from failure is the key to the aggregation of what your season is. And you hope you can win 50-plus games, you hope you can get homecourt in the first round and be a top seed.”
The reality is that the Lakers exceeded external expectations.
Their preseason over/under win total was in the range of mid-to-high 40s.
Despite being projected as a top-heavy team, they’ve gotten as much out of this group as reasonably expected.
“I know none of you guys had us in the top four to start this season,” Redick said. “That’s just the reality. Most people had us as a play-in team or even worse. So we’ve had to manage the expectations of the Lakers and also the negativity that just naturally surrounds every loss. Our group has managed that well.”