Lakers News: Insider Considers LA On Fringe Of Contention This Season

LA's set up to have a great season.

Matt Wagner | Jul 24, 2023

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Los Angeles Lakers

The 2023-2024 NBA season is still a ways away, but it's never too early to preview where teams might stack up next year.

The Los Angeles Lakers are arguably one of the more intriguing teams in the NBA.

Their playoff hopes looked all but dead in the water before an almost complete reshuffling of the roster at the trade deadline transformed the Lakers from one of the most disappointing teams in the league into Western Conference contenders.

The additions of Rui Hachimura and D'Angelo Russell paid dividends for LA, and Austin Reaves flipping his season into an even higher gear keyed the Lakers on a surprising run all the way to the Western Conference Finals.

Even though they fell in four games to the eventual champion Denver Nuggets, the Lakers will be a surprise no longer in the leadup to next season.

The entire core that led the team's resurgence is back for the long term after free agency, and some key new additions in Gabe Vincent and Taurean Prince along with the returns of LeBron James and Anthony Davis see the Lakers aiming high next year.

That playoff run and great offseason has earned the Lakers their respect, as Zach Harper of The Athletic named them as being on the "brink of contention."

"After the trade deadline, the Lakers were a completely different team. We saw that in their defense. We saw that in them surviving a big stretch of games without LeBron James. We saw that in their march to eventually being swept in the conference finals. The Lakers vastly improved on the fly." (via Zach Harper)

For all the well deserved hype surrounding this team, they do need to get back on the court first to prove that attention has substance behind it.

That said, this group is largely familiar with each other, has two superstars anchoring the operation along with an absurd amount of depth, and they're certainly set up to have a repeat of last year's run.

And maybe -- just maybe -- they can go even further.

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Published Jul 24, 2023

MATT WAGNER

Matt Wagner was born and raised in southern California, and he lived there before moving to Colorado and getting his B.A. in Communications from the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs in 2022. He relocated back to southern California in 2023 and is looking forward to covering the teams that mean so much to his home area. Some of his past work is in Bleacher Report, Dodgers Tailgate, and, most recently, Colorado Buffaloes Wire. Aside from writing, you can probably catch him petting the nearest dog or eating some good Mexican food.