LA Lakers Frank Vogel
Photo: Bleacher Report

The return of LeBron James was marked by a third straight win for the Los Angeles Lakers. The reigning NBA champions defeated the Indiana Pacers 122-115 behind 28 points from Anthony Davis and 24 points from James.

The Lakers remained in the seventh place in the Western Conference, but have tied the sixth-placed Portland Trail Blazers’ record of 41 wins and 30 losses. Should the Lakers win their final regular season game against the New Orleans Pelicans and Portland loses theirs against the Denver Nuggets, Los Angeles would take the sixth place and a direct ticket to the playoffs.

After the game, Lakers head coach Frank Vogel was asked about his team’s readiness for the postseason. “We still could use a lot more time to find cohesiveness but I thought there was a lot of positives with today’s game as a little bit of a snapshot of what we could look like,” he said.

“Certainly on the defensive end we can be a lot better than we were and we’ll have to be if we’re gonna win in the playoffs. We don’t really have control of how much time we have. So we just got to make the best of whatever situation we end up in and if we have to play a play-in game, we’re confident in what we can accomplish.”