The Los Angeles Lakers faced the Utah Jazz on Sunday with the No. 3 seed in the Western Conference still within reach. Los Angeles needed a win and a Denver Nuggets loss on the final day of the regular season to move up, with LeBron James listed as questionable.
The stakes were real even after the Lakers had already locked up home-court advantage in the first round by beating the Phoenix Suns on Friday. They also held the tiebreaker over the Houston Rockets, who were one game back and locked into the No. 5 seed, which meant the Lakers’ seeding path still depended on results elsewhere as much as on what happened against Utah.
James had been carrying more of the load with Luka Doncic sidelined by a hamstring issue and Austin Reaves out with an oblique injury. In that stretch, James had at least 11 assists in three games in a row and had posted 10 or more assists in his last four games without Doncic, a sign that the offense had leaned harder on him to create for others as much as to score.
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The matchup itself favored Los Angeles on paper. Utah entered the game with 22 wins, ranked 29th in the NBA in defensive rating, and had allowed the most assists to opponents in the league. James had already produced 12 assists, eight assists and 10 assists in three previous games against the Jazz, a record that fit the way Utah had struggled to keep him from steering the Lakers’ offense.
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That is the tension in the final day for Los Angeles: the Lakers could do their part and still end up waiting on Denver, because the No. 3 seed depended on two outcomes, not one. For James, the game was another test of how far he could push a shorthanded roster when the West standings were still shifting around him.
