Los Angeles Lakers Have Nowhere to Go but Up in Western Conference

LOS ANGELES — Despite last year’s disappointing 17-win season and a 2-6 preseason record this month, the Los Angeles Lakers are an optimistic bunch, enjoying their honeymoon under their rookie head coach, Luke Walton.

“He connects to us really well. He keeps practice fun and loose, so no one has a problem learning when he’s teaching,” said guard Jordan Clarkson. “We’ve all got respect for him because he knows what he’s talking about.”

The challenge for Walton will be keeping his team engaged, if (and when) the losses pile up. The Lakers will be a better team than they were a year ago, but even if they manage to double up in the win column to 34, that’s still a hefty 48 losses.

The Lakers start the 2016-17 regular season on Wednesday at Staples Center, hosting the Houston Rockets, another team with a new coach, Mike D’Antoni. The team won 41 games last year, barely beating out the Utah Jazz to earn the eighth and final playoff berth in the Western Conference.

The Lakers were dead last. To make the postseason, they’ll need to surpass at least seven teams.

Second-year guard D’Angelo Russell believes the Lakers will be a threat this season.

“When we match up against teams, we can really compete and finish games,” he said on Monday. “I felt we competed last year, but we never finished the game. A lot of games we lost by buzzer-beaters, or one play determined the loss. This year, I feel we’re better at finishing games.”

One team the Lakers won’t catch is the Golden State Warriors, a 73-win squad before adding all-star forward Kevin Durant. They represent the class of the West, if not the league itself.

The Lakers also aren’t anywhere near the San Antonio Spurs (67-15) or Los Angeles Clippers (53-29). Both should reach at least 55 wins with their veteran talent.

The next tier would include the up-and-coming Portland Trail Blazers (44-38) and Utah Jazz (40-42), along with battle-tested franchises like the Dallas Mavericks (42-40) and Memphis Grizzlies (42-50).

Portland got past an injured Clippers in the playoffs last year, giving the Warriors a challenge in the second round. The Jazz are ready to make their leap, with the addition of veterans like George Hill, Joe Johnson and Boris Diaw.

Can superstar guards Russell Westbrook and James Harden carry their respective Oklahoma City Thunder (55-27) and Rockets to the playoffs?

With head coach Tom Thibodeau on the bench, the Minnesota Timberwolves (29-53) are going to try and defend their way to a playoff berth. The New Orleans Pelicans (30-52) already have injury concerns, but all-star forward/center Anthony Davis is one of the league’s best players.

The Lakers might be able to sneak up on inconsistent teams like the Denver Nuggets (33-49) and Sacramento Kings (33-49). The Phoenix Suns (23-59) are also a youthful quandary this season.

Even if the Lakers manage to exceed humble expectations, anything higher than 11th in the West would be a massive achievement.

“I’m looking at it from an individual standpoint of how I feel we played. I’m not looking at, ‘Are we going to jump them?’ Walton said of his conference opponents. “Did we execute our game plan? Did we do our defensive rotations? And if we lose, then I’m fine with that.

“If we win a game, where we didn’t do anything, we just happened to get hot—I’m not as happy about that,” he continued. “I’m not going to lie and say I’m not going to look at the standings, but I’m not going to be judging our success on where those standings are.”

The Lakers will certainly improve, and it would be an entirely different challenge to do any worse.

Even if the team can come and stay together under Walton, the relative inexperience of core players like Brandon Ingram, Julius Randle, Larry Nance Jr., Clarkson and Russell will keep the Lakers in at least the bottom seven in the Western Conference.

LAKERS INSIDER’S NOTEBOOK Gary Payton …

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