Cover Photo: Harry How/Getty Images


The Los Angeles Lakers' first season with LeBron James has officially descended into a nightmare. With under 20 games to go in the season, the Lakers are 30-33 and 4.5 games out of a playoff spot in the West. Even though they have the best player in the world, the rest of the team just hasn't been good enough to carry its weight. 


The Lakers are in real danger of missing the playoffs entirely and the odds have finally begun to adjust to that reality, especially when it comes to winning the whole thing. 

The Lakers are now +7500 to win the title, a massive dip from the +3300 odds they had to win the title last week. LeBron may be great, but the Lakers haven't been and the odds are starting to reflect that. 


LeBron has missed the playoffs before in his career, back in 2003-04 and 2004-05 he missed the playoffs in back-to-back seasons with the Cavaliers. Two years later, the Cavs were in the NBA Finals. 


Honestly, though, LeBron doesn't exactly seem troubled by the whole thing.

Despite their poor play, the Lakers still have better odds to win it all than the Spurs, who are the current No. 8 seed in the West, the No. 7 seed Clippers and the No. 4 seed Trail Blazers. That's the effect LeBron can still have on oddsmakers. But if the Lakers don't turn this around immediately and have an end of the season for the ages, these odds are only going to plummet further as LeBron does the unthinkable and misses the playoffs. 

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Ian McCafferty is not a FanDuel employee. In addition to providing DFS gameplay advice, Ian McCafferty also participates in DFS contests on FanDuel using his personal account, username itmccaff. While the strategies and player selections recommended in his articles are his personal views, he may deploy different strategies and player selections when entering contests with his personal account. The views expressed in their articles are the author's alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of FanDuel.