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CHICAGO, ILLINOIS – MARCH 27: Head coach JJ Redick of the Los Angeles Lakers reacts against the Chicago Bulls during the second half at the United Center on March 27, 2025 in Chicago, Illinois. <\/p>\n
The Los Angeles Lakers<\/a> (52-29) sealed home-court advantage in the first round of the playoffs when they beat the Phoenix Suns<\/a>, 101-73, on Friday night. The Lakers also benefited from the Houston Rockets<\/a> (51-30) having their eight-game winning streak snapped by the Minnesota Timberwolves<\/a> (48-33).<\/p>\n Since the Lakers own the tiebreaker over the Rockets, they will finish higher in the standings even if both teams end the regular season with identical records on Sunday. While the Lakers will face the Utah Jazz<\/a> on the final day of the season, the Rockets will square off against another lottery-bound team in the Memphis Grizzlies<\/a>.<\/p>\n The Lakers allowed just 25 points in the second half. They win 101-73 against the Suns, clinching home court advantage in the first round of the playoffs as either the No. 3 or No. 4 seed.<\/p>\n Can Lakers Claim 3rd Seed?<\/p>\n The Lakers technically still have a chance to wrest the third seed from the Denver Nuggets<\/a> (53-28), who won their 11th straight game on Friday. For that to happen, the Nuggets would have to lose to the San Antonio Spurs<\/a> (62-19) in their regular-season finale on Sunday \u2014 a realistic possibility. Once again, since the Lakers own the tiebreaker over the Nuggets, they will surpass Nikola Jokic<\/a> and Co. in the standings if both teams finish with identical records (53-28) after Sunday\u2019s games.<\/p>\n Regardless of what transpires on Sunday, the Lakers are guaranteed to play Game 1 of the upcoming playoffs at home \u2014 a terrific morale-booster for the injury-ravaged team.<\/p>\n Lakers Get Morale Boost<\/p>\n The positive news comes at a time when the Lakers may be without both Austin Reaves<\/a> and Luka Doncic<\/a> for the entirety of the first round of the playoffs.<\/p>\n Ahead of Friday\u2019s win, Lakers head coach JJ Redick<\/a> admitted that, whether it\u2019s a 4 vs. 5 matchup against the Rockets or a 3 vs. 6 matchup against the Timberwolves, his team will enter the playoffs as the underdog because of its injury situation.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m sure everybody wants to play us,\u201d Redick said, via ESPN\u2019s Dave McMenamin.<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cLet\u2019s get that out there, like, everybody wants to play us.\u201d<\/p>\n Redick also suggested that the Oklahoma City Thunder<\/a> and Denver Nuggets purposely sat out all their players on Friday to try to manipulate the final seedings.<\/p>\n \u201c[Teams] are in a position where they can start looking forward to potential second-round matchups as well,\u201d Redick said. \u201cWe see some of those teams rest their entire lineup basically, so they \u2014 we can\u2019t be concerned with all of that.<\/p>\n \u201cAgain, I\u2019ll say what I told the team yesterday, what I told you guys after the game, we have to figure out the formula and the belief for this group to be successful. And so, that\u2019s our focus for tonight, and that\u2019s going to be our focus on Sunday.\u201d<\/p>\n The Lakers could potentially sit out LeBron James<\/a> for the regular-season finale, given that they have already secured home-court advantage for the first round of the playoffs. However, they could go full-throttle if they\u2019re serious about pursuing the third seed.<\/p>\n \n\t\t\tSai Mohan<\/a> covers the NBA for Heavy.com. Based in Portugal, Sai is a seasoned sports writer with nearly two decades of publishing experience, including bylines at Yardbarker, FanSided’s Hoops Habit, International Business Times, Hindustan Times and more. More about Sai Mohan<\/a>\t\t<\/p>\n \n\t\t\tMore Heavy on Lakers\n\t\t<\/p>\n \n\t\t\t\tLoading more stories\n\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Getty CHICAGO, ILLINOIS – MARCH 27: Head coach JJ Redick of the Los Angeles Lakers reacts against the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":708005,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3794],"tags":[7,292,194,4066,6,211],"class_list":{"0":"post-708004","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-houston-rockets","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-houston","10":"tag-houston-rockets","11":"tag-houstonrockets","12":"tag-nba","13":"tag-rockets"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116384941992719943","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/708004","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=708004"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/708004\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/708005"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=708004"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=708004"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=708004"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}