Austin Reaves says he’ll be paying attention to standings in final days of regular season
With the Western Conference standings as tight as ever, Austin Reaves will be watching just like the rest of us.
With the Lakers dropping a key game against the Golden State Warriors, they no longer control their destiny regarding where they end up in the Western Conference standings.
Even if they win their last two games, whether they stay at nine, fall to ten, or jump higher will depend on other results.
Will players on the Lakers team be watching these Western Conference games to see what their playoff situation looks like?
"For me, I do," Austin Reaves said after their loss to the Warriors. "Obviously, you want to go up in the standings and put yourself in a good position to go make a run at this like we did last year. Nothing's really any different now. You just have to show up and, like I said before, we have to handle our business first and whatever happens around the league happens. But good things don't happen if we don't win regardless.
That's the main focus is to go play a good brand of basketball, high-level IQ basketball. We like when we do that and we feel like we can beat anybody. That's the main thing and, yeah, I'll be watching other games just cause, honestly, I'm a fan of basketball."
Certainly, Reaves won't be the only player watching other Western Conference matchups, but it was cool that he acknowledged it and didn't try to pretend he wasn't thinking about the current play-in situation in any way.
The Lakers have an uphill battle if they want to climb out of the ninth seed. The tiebreaker situation is tough, with Los Angeles only holding that advantage over the Suns, but they could earn the tiebreaker over the Pelicans if they beat them on Sunday, Apr. 14, the last day of the regular season.
Until then, the Lakers need to take care of business versus the Memphis Grizzlies on Friday and do a little standings watch in between.
If you want to be like Reaves and keep an eye on the games that matter for the Lakers, here’s a rooting guide for Wednesday’s action.
Things may look grim with the Lakers dropping a pair of games and Davis missing the Warriors matchup, but L.A. still has plenty of scenarios in which it can avoid the 9/10 matchup and improve their play-in positioning.
You can follow Edwin on Twitter at @ECreates88.