Can the Lakers Really Start 20-1?

Admit it.  When Reggie Miller first predicted that the Lakers were going to start the season 20-1, you laughed.  The Lakers are going to be good, but 20-1 good?  That is just bonkers.  After the Lakers lost Pau Gasol to injury right before the season, it seemed like 20-1 was just a pipe dream.  But here we stand seven games into the season and the Lakers are 6-1 with Gasol returning any day now, so as strange as it seems, 20-1 could still happen.

Holy crap, Reggie Miller might actually be right about something.

The Lakers have weathered the early storm of injuries and are currently on a five-game winning streak.  All they need to do now to meet Reggie Miller’s outrageous prediction is rattle off another 14 consecutive victories.  Easy, right?  Actually, it might be easier than you think.  Of the next fourteen games on the Laker schedule, just two are on the road, one in Denver and one in  Golden State.  The Denver game looms large and is quite likely the toughest game in the 14-game stretch, but the Warriors are an absolute mess right now, so that should be an easy victory.  As for their home games, only five games come against teams who currently have a winning record (Houston, Chicago, Miami and Phoenix twice).  It isn’t exactly a cake walk for the Lakers, but I wouldn’t call it daunting either.

Granted, the Lakers haven’t exactly been at the top of their game thus far this season, but that doesn’t mean they can’t pull off such a massive winning streak.  They have braved some early bumps in the road and now things are starting to fall into place quite nicely for a massive winning streak: the last two games have been utter blowouts, so the bench mob is actually starting to get their act together, Gasol and Bynum should be healthy possibly as soon as this Thursday, Ron Artest is getting comfortable in the triangle and Kobe is on an obscene offensive roll.  In other words, they are a whole lot closer to the top of their game now than they were just a week ago.

Watch out, NBA, the Lakers are getting ready to roll.

Fourteen games is a long time to wait and a lot can go wrong in that span, but in reality, if they are going to fall short of that mark, it should happen this week.  They will have to take on the red hot Suns, possibly without Gasol and/or Bynum then head to Denver to try and beat a Nugget team that will be hellbent on avenging their Western Conference Finals loss.  Finally, they will host Houston who took the Lakers to overtime last week.  After that it is pretty much smooth sailing until the Lakers face off against Phoenix again in what would be the next to last game of the streak.

The only real problem is that the Lakers have already lost one game this year, so there is no margin for error.  One more slip like they had against Dallas and the 20-1 quest is kaput.  If they don’t pull it off, so be it.  I’m sure nobody will begrudge a 19-2 or 18-3 start.  The mere fact that such an amazing start is even a possibility is incredible unto itself, almost as incredible as the fact that Reggie Miller was the only one to predict it.

Tags: Analysis, Andrew Bynum, Kobe Bryant, Pau Gasol, Reggie Miller, Ron Artest