If the season ended today, the 4-4 Los Angeles Lakers would be tied for the eighth playoff spot in the Western Conference. Can the Lakers, who are coming off their three worst seasons since they moved to L.A. in 1960 and pegged for just 24.5 wins this season by Las Vegas oddsmakers, actually make it back to the postseason?
Lakers head coach Luke Walton told USA Today that he is saying "nothing about that" playoff possibility to his players and instead focusing on continuing to improve, but Lakers fans can't be blamed for getting their hopes up after an unexpectedly strong start.
Is it realistic?
Playoff odds at 4-4
Over the past 11 seasons, not including the lockout-shortened 2011-12 campaign, 63 teams have started 4-4, according to Basketball-Reference.com. Of those, 29 (or 46 percent) have gone on to reach the postseason. That makes sense, given that it typically takes a record slightly better than .500 to make the playoffs.
Looking at overall record, however, omits a lot of variability among these teams in terms of talent. Taking into account preseason expectations, using preseason over-unders can help better determine which 4-4 starts are for real and which are mirages.
Every team that has started 4-4 with a preseason line of 48 wins or better has, in fact, gone on to make the playoffs. Overall, teams that started 4-4 were much more likely to make the playoffs than not if they were picked to do so before the season.
Teams such as the Lakers, who were expected to be in the lottery, have predictably had a much more difficult time converting decent starts into postseason appearances. Among teams with preseason lines worse than 30 wins, just 30.8 percent (four of 13) went on to make the playoffs.
The Lakers can take hope from the recent example of the 2014-15 Milwaukee Bucks, who had an identical 24.5-win over-under but went on to win 41 games and finish sixth in the East that season.
Still, the lingering importance of preseason expectations helps explain why projection systems such as ESPN's Basketball Power Index (BPI) and FiveThirtyEight's CARM-Elo model are relatively low on the Lakers' playoff odds. BPI gives the Lakers a 5.5 percent chance of making the playoffs, well below the Lakers' estimated chances of keeping their draft pick another year by winning a top-three lottery slot (14.9 percent), and CARM-Elo is a little more optimistic, with 8 percent playoff odds.
Where the Lakers might regress
If the Lakers can't be expected to play this well the remainder of the season, what might not be sustainable? Let's start with Julius Randle's shooting. In his second full NBA season after he missed nearly all of his rookie campaign with a fractured right tibia, Randle has pushed his 2-point percentage from 43.6 percent to 62.2 percent, an incredible jump of 18.6 percent.
If Randle were to somehow maintain that, it would be the largest year-over-year increase in 2-point percentage by a player with at least 250 attempts both years since the introduction of the 3-point line in 1979-80.
Although Randle is attempting fewer long 2s than he did in 2015-16, he is also attempting fewer shots at the rim. He is turning both into more of the shots from 3-9 feet that he made at a 36.2 percent clip last season, per Basketball-Reference.com. Randle's improvement has been driven primarily by his finishing 82.9 percent of his shots within 2 feet, up from 56.8 percent last season. Some progress was to be expected, certainly, but given that no player in the league made 80 percent of his shots from inside 2 feet last season (Hassan Whiteside was tops among players with at least 100 attempts, at 77.3 percent), odds are that Randle is going to regress to the mean.
There's also the matter of 3-point defense. The Lakers are allowing opponents to shoot 55.1 percent on 2-point attempts, which is the worst number by any defense in the league. On the other hand, the Lakers have held opponents to 29.8 percent beyond the arc, including 5-of-32 shooting by the Golden State Warriors in the Lakers' 117-97 win Friday at the Staples Center. Only the Oklahoma City Thunder, at 27.9 percent, have seen opponents miss a higher percentage of their 3s.
Studies have consistently shown that teams have little control over what percentage their opponents shoot from 3-point range, and the control they do have is related to their ability to defend inside the 3-point line. As such, over the course of a season, that usually evens out. (Lo and behold, the Dallas Mavericks shot 43.5 percent from 3 in their win Monday in L.A.)
For now, the Lakers have allowed nine or 10 fewer 3s than they would if opponents shot an average percentage. Adding those points against the Lakers would drop their defensive rating from 20th in the NBA to 26th.
Lakers still growing as a team
Even if the Lakers can't maintain a .500 record, there's plenty of reason to be optimistic about how they've played so far this season. Randle has shown the ability to score more efficiently and has been more active defensively. D'Angelo Russell has taken on a larger role in his second season at age 20, and this year's No. 2 pick, Brandon Ingram, has shown flashes after turning 19 not long before training camp. Building around their talent, the Lakers have plenty of positive development ahead.
Although the playoffs are a long shot, the Lakers have already proven to be more competitive than expected, given their preseason line. CARM-Elo projects them to win 31 games on average, and BPI has them winning an average of 33 games.
That kind of win total would make it more difficult for the Lakers to avoid sending their top-three protected draft pick to the Philadelphia 76ers, but fans might take that trade-off for a more exciting, promising team.