Friday’s matchup at Minnesota was the Lakers’ most important game of the season. A win would vault them into into seventh and just a game-and-a-half out of the teams tied for the fifth and sixth seeds, while a loss would have dropped then into ninth with only a half-game separating them from 10, and just a game ahead of 11. Therefore, the game’s result effectively meant the difference between a puncher’s chance at a top-six seed and the automatic playoff birth that comes with it, or a virtual guarantee that the Lakers would need to win a pair of play-in games to make it in.
The Biggest Lesson from the Lakers’ Best Win of the Season
