Hello, Lakers Nation. Welcome in to the Lakers Nation.com podcast. My name's Trevor Lane, and it's game day. Lakers Celtics 3.30 p.m. Pacific time today. We've got an early one today. We'll see if the Lakers can take down those ghouls in green, the hated Boston Celtics. Of course, I'll be live at 3.30 p.m. Pacific right here on the Lakersnation.com YouTube channel, doing a little play-by-play, breaking down the game as it happens, taking your questions, your comments. It's like a party, and hopefully in this party, we get to celebrate the Lakers, taking down the Boston Celtics. All right, on today's show, not much to get into on the injury report. We're going to take a peek at the standings.

Look at the keys to victory for the Lakers game today. And who is the expect? A little bit of a surprise in that one, by the way.

So let's dive in. Let's start off with the standings watch here for the Lakers. Right now, they are the five seed.

Now last night, the Houston Rockets did drop their game to the New York Knicks.

Big fourth quarter comeback for the Knicks in that one.

Thank you very much, New York.

puts a loss on Houston and the Lakers and the Rockets right now tied at 34 and 21 on the season.

The Rockets maintain the four seed, the Lakers, the five seed, because Houston is

one and O against the Lakers so far on this season.

So with Houston having the tiebreaker right now over the Lakers, they are the four seed,

the Lakers, the five seed, but a win over Boston today would flip that and move the Lakers into the four seed.

So that would be a nice thing to happen there.

Now, the Lakers hanging right in there in the West, but you see how tight things are.

Essentially, what we have shaping up now is between Denver and the three seed, Houston in four, the Lakers in five, the wolves in six,

and the Lakers and wolves both tied as well in terms of games back. The wolves have a couple

more games in hand where they've played a couple more games than L.A. has or Houston. They're

35 and 22. And then the Phoenix Sons right now sitting in the seven seed. They just lost Dylan Brooks. He is dealing with a broken bone in his hand. And Devin Booker is dealing with the hippies. In fact, I would assume if he's able to, Devin Booker will probably return to play the Lakers on Thursday, but it did sound like he was going to be out of full week. The Sons could be very shorthanded when they play the Lakers on Thursday, but it did sound like he was going to be out of full week.

The Sons could be very short-handed when they play the Lakers on Thursday.

But right now, it does look like Denver, Houston, L.A., Minnesota, and Phoenix.

Those five teams are essentially the teams that are competing for the three through seven spots right now in the Western Conference. So every

game against any one of those opponents essentially counts double for the Lakers. And they are

going to have plenty of those coming up on the schedule. So that is right now the race for the Lakers.

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