The Los Angeles Lakers are going to finish the 2022-23 NBA season with at least 42 wins. They will either be 42-40 and 43-39 after their final game of the season against the Utah Jazz on Sunday afternoon. While that’s only 2-4 games above .500, it can’t be overstated how improbable that finish is given where L.A. started.
The Lakers began the season with a 2-10 record and were one miraculous 3-pointer from Matt Ryan away from starting 1-11. They are 40-29 since Nov. 12 and 17-8 since making several additions at the NBA trade deadline. They join just six prior NBA teams to start 2-10 or worse and finish above .500.
L.A. is the first team since both the Chicago Bulls and New Jersey Nets in 2004-05 to start with a 2-10 or worse record and finish with an above .500 record, via ESPN Stats and Info.
Yes, as improbable as this stat is — only six teams in NBA history — two of them did it in the exact same season, and both earned postseason berths because of their turnarounds.
The Nets began their season 2-11, including a nine-game losing streak, and finished 42-40 to secure the No. 8 seed in the Eastern Conference. That is a 40-29 stretch that mirrors the exact stretch the Lakers have been on since Nov. 12. They did this despite having just three win streaks of at least four games.
The Nets’ turnaround can almost exclusively be attributed to the mid-season blockbuster trade that landed them an All-Star. On Dec. 17, 2004, the Nets traded Alonzo Mourning, Aaron Williams, Eric Williams and first-round picks in 2005 and 2006 to the Toronto Raptors for Vince Carter.
Carter made his Nets debut on Dec. 27 and the team would go 33-24 the rest of the way. Carter was an All-Star in 2005.
New Jersey would go on to get swept in the first round with a 12.8 average margin of defeat against the No. 1 seed Miami Heat. The Heat would lose in the Eastern Conference Finals to the Detroit Pistons.
Perhaps the more impressive turnaround, though, is the Bulls that season. The Bulls began their season 0-9 and 2-13 and would somehow finish 47-35 with the No. 4 seed in the conference. From Dec. 8 to the end of that regular season, they went 45-22. They compiled separate win streaks of five, seven and nine games.
Even more impressively, they made no in-season roster changes. This turnaround was led by Eddy Curry, Kirk Hinrich, Ben Gordon and Luol Deng. Their highest-paid player was a 36-year-old Antonio Davis who averaged 7.0 points per game in 25.6 minutes.
Their second and third-highest-paid players were Scottie Pippen and Eddie Robinson, who did not play and were waived before the first game.
The Bulls would ultimately lose in the first round in a six-game series against the Washington Wizards.
LeBron James okay with Lakers in Play-In Tournament
Lakers star LeBron James was honest in his assessment of the Lakers potentially being in the Play-In Tournament for the second time in the three years since its inception in its current form, via Spectrum SportsNet:
“Listen, it is what it is. Wherever we end up, that’s where we end up. It’s been a…it’s been like four or five seasons in one for us. We don’t have the luxury of saying this is what we need to do, this is where we’re going to be. We need to still continue to play good basketball.
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