Lakers Playoff Watch: And Then There Were 11?

It appears another team is slipping out of the play-in race.

Last night, even though your Los Angeles Lakers were still off recuperating from a 118-108 defeat at the hands of the Chicago Bulls the day before, there was plenty of deck-shuffling in the Western Conference postseason race.

Most importantly, it appears that one club, Danny Ainge's Utah Jazz, is on the cusp of falling out of the hunt for a play-in tournament bracket slot. The Jazz fell 117-103 to the fourth-seeded Phoenix Suns on Monday night, which dropped their record to a 35-40 record, two games behind the West's tenth seed, the 37-38 Oklahoma City Thunder. Incidentally, the Thunder share that record with your Los Angeles Lakers, the ninth seed.

With just seven games left in both teams' seasons (assuming OKC All-Star Shai Gilgeous-Alexander is healthy enough to play, anyway), it may be tough for Utah to catch up, especially given how the club has been playing of late. This loss actually marks the Jazz's fourth straight, and third double-figure defeat of the four.

The Dallas Mavericks, meanwhile, resoundingly beat the Indiana Pacers 127-104 to improve to a 37-39 record on the year and climb to within a half-game of the Thunder and Lakers. Luka Doncic, Kyrie Irving and co. are still very much in the thick of the play-in hunt, it turns out.

Ex-Laker Brandon Ingram's New Orleans Pelicans won their fifth straight game, a 124-90 shellacking of the fully tanking, Damian Lillard-free Portland Trail Blazers. The victory moved NOLA to a 38-37 record on the year.

Finally, in something of a surprise development, the West's third-seeded Sacramento Kings botched an opportunity at home to clinch their first playoff appearance in 17 years against a Minnesota Timberwolves team without Karl-Anthony Towns. KAT has returned to the Wolves following a lengthy calf injury, but the team opted to rest him Monday on the second night of a back-to-back pair of games. Led by a 16-point, 16-rebound Rudy Gobert double-double, Minnesota won, 119-115 (they held a bigger advantage than that down the game's home stretch).

That Wolves win actually had significant play-in race implications, as it shifted the 39-37 team to the West's No. 6 seed, dropping the Golden State Warriors into the play-in bracket. Though the Warriors share an identical record with Minnesota, the Timberwolves currently possess the tiebreaker, and are suddenly just 1.5 games behind the fourth-seeded Suns (40-35). The Lakers are a mere three games back, probably an insurmountable edge for Phoenix, but Los Angeles could certainly leap into at least the fifth or sixth seed.

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