Lakers, with No. 3 seed clinched, confident vying for NBA title
LOS ANGELES — Moments after the Lakers’ home win over the Houston Rockets on Friday, which secured the Lakers the No. 3 seed in the Western Conference’s side of the playoffs bracket, Austin Reaves was told a piece of trivia he wasn’t aware of.
Out of the 78 NBA champions entering the 2025-25 season, 76 have been a top-three seed in their respective conference.
It’s been exactly 30 years since the last time a non-top-three seed won the NBA title – last done by the 1994-95 Houston Rockets, a No. 6 seed that won the championship the previous season.
So for the Lakers, who were already confident in their abilities to compete for a title, grabbing the third seed and their first 50-win season since winning the championship in 2019-20 was only reassuring of how they’ve already felt about their team internally.
“We feel very comfortable with what we got in the locker room, from front office, coaching staff to players,” Reaves said. “We’re all locked into one goal and that’s to win a championship. We can play different ways and then we got the best player to ever play the game [in LeBron James] and then probably, arguably [someone who is] going to be one of the best players to ever play the game with Luka [Doncic].
“And then around that, we have guys that are just bought into winning and that’s what you need when you’re trying to make a run like that.”
Reaves quipped that this regular season has felt like five seasons wrapped into one.
But the ups and downs provided Reaves clarity on where he feels the Lakers stack up compared to the rest of the league.
“I feel like we could win a championship, to be honest with you,” Reaves said. “And the reason is I know that everybody in that locker room believes that and has also bought into whatever your role is to help us do that. You could go down the line of everybody in there and ask them what their role is, and they’ll tell you exactly what it is. We’re not unrealistic with each other. And that’s what you have to be to be a good group.
“You have to be honest with each other. And that’s why I give this coaching staff a lot of credit. They come in and they planted their system and they held guys accountable to what they asked them to do. And everybody bought into that.”
Doncic, whom the Lakers acquired in early February, agreed with Reaves.
“That’s gotta be [the] only goal, and that’s our only goal,” he said. “We have the team to do it. When everybody’s locked in, we’re a hard team to beat.”
The Lakers will close the regular season against the Trail Blazers on Sunday afternoon in Portland before hosting Games 1 and 2 of their best-of-seven first-round playoff series in Los Angeles for the first time since April 2012.
Sunday’s game won’t affect their postseason fate, and they are expected to rest many of their core players against the Trail Blazers while several other games being played that afternoon will determine their first-round opponent.
The Golden State Warriors occupied the No. 6 seed as of Saturday, but three teams can still finish in that spot in a tightly packed race – the Warriors, Denver Nuggets and Minnesota Timberwolves.
But by taking care of their business, the Lakers have provided themselves with an opportunity to give their main players at least a week off from gameplay and at least 1½ weeks in Southern California as they turn their attention to postseason play.
“Just incredibly proud of our team,” Lakers coach JJ Redick said. “It’s an accomplishment to win 50 games in the regular season in any year – particularly in this year, in this Western Conference, it is. And it’s a credit to our players. Each one, at different points in time, has contributed to winning. They’ve all participated in a winning culture. And our coaching staff, our performance staff, everybody down the line, like, it’s a great group to be a part of. We wanna go win one more game and we’ll figure out Sunday who we play in the first round.”
LAKERS AT TRAIL BLAZERS
When: 12:30 p.m. Sunday
Where: Moda Center, Portland
TV/radio: Spectrum SportsNet/710 AM