Done Deal:Mike Greenberg spent ‘Get Up’ arguing Lakers should
The NBA’s annual Play-In Tournament will begin on Tuesday night with the New Orleans Pelicans facing the Los Angeles Lakers.
But while the winner of the game will advance to become the No. 7 seed in the Western Conference playoffs, ESPN’s Mike Greenberg believes that the Lakers would be better off losing on Tuesday night.
Greeny’s logic: while the winner of Tuesday night’s game will be guaranteed a spot in the proper playoffs, that team will also be tasked with facing the defending champion Denver Nuggets. And that could amount to an effective death sentence for the Lakers, who have struggled against Denver in recent seasons, including being on the wrong side of a four-game sweep in last year’s Western Conference Finals.
Meanwhile, the loser of Tuesday’s matchup between the Lakers and Pelicans will face the winner of Tuesday’s game between the Sacramento Kings and Golden State Warriors. The winner of the ensuing matchup between the loser of Pelicans/Lakers and winner of the Kings/Warriors will qualify for the playoffs as the No. 8 seed, giving them a more viable — but still difficult — matchup against the No. 1 seed Oklahoma City Thunder.
Greenberg first presented his theory on Monday and was met with resistance. That, however, didn’t stop him from doubling down on Tuesday.
You tell me how it does not better serve the Lakers to lose tonight’s game,” Greenberg posed to panelists Tim Legler and Brian Windhorst.
While Legler and Windhorst both agreed with Greenberg that the Thunder would be a better matchup for the Lakers than the Nuggets, they both said that winning on Tuesday remains their best course of action. As Legler noted, there’s no guarantee that the Lakers would beat either the Kings or Warriors in the ensuing Play-In game, while Windhorst pointed to the rest advantages that winning on Tuesday would provide for LeBron James.
Still, Greeny stuck to his guns, re-presenting his theory to Andraya Carter later in the show.