The Los Angeles Lakers are losing games in bunches at the worst possible time of the NBA season. They have dropped eight of their last 12 games, including an absolute heartbreaker on Thursday to the Chicago Bulls on Josh Giddey's halfcourt buzzer-beater, and they're on the verge of not having home-court advantage in any round of the playoffs.
They're barely in fourth place in the Western Conference with a 44-29 record, the same record that the fifth-place Memphis Grizzlies — the team the Lakers will play on Saturday — currently have.