Magic Johnson is not ducking any smoke.
The retired Los Angeles Lakers great spoke out on X this week with the team about to face the New Orleans Pelicans in the play-in tournament on Tuesday.
Should the Lakers defeat the Pelicans, they would earn the No. 7 seed and face the No. 2 Denver Nuggets in the first round of the playoffs. That has led to some fans and pundits calling for the Lakers to intentionally lose the game to try to set up a matchup against the No. 1 seed Oklahoma City Thunder in the first round instead.
“I want the Lakers to beat the Pelicans tonight to secure the No. 7 seed and face the Nuggets,” Johnson wrote in response. “Even though the Lakers lost their four matchups against the Nuggets [in last year’s playoffs], Games 2, 3, and 4 were all close!
“It’s ridiculous that I’ve been hearing people think they should intentionally lose to face the winner of the Kings-Warriors and eventually, the Thunder,” Johnson went on. “As a true competitor, you should always want to win. To be the best, you have to beat the best!”
A first-round matchup against Denver would surely be petrifying for the Lakers. The Nuggets swept them in last year’s Western Conference Finals (with some real brutal moments for the Lakers along the way) and also won all three regular season meetings against the Lakers this year. Conversely, the Lakers have had the number of the young, inexperienced Thunder, winning the season series against them 3-1.
With all that in mind, many have been clamoring for the Lakers to do all that they can to avoid the Nuggets, most notably ESPN’s Mike Greenberg.
The problem though is that should the Lakers lose intentionally Tuesday, a loss to the winner of the Sacramento-Golden State 9-10 play-in game would definitively mean the end of their season. They can’t afford to play with fire like that, especially since the Kings own them (sweeping the season series 4-0), and the Warriors (an unpredictable firecracker led by Steph Curry) also won the season series against the Lakers 3-1.
If the Lakers truly have title aspirations, they will likely have to go through the defending champion Nuggets at some point anyway. Getting them in Round 1 would also be the Lakers’ chance to make good on the trash that they talked to Denver before the season.
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