While most doubt the Lakers, what Shannon Sharpe said about LA surprises

The LA Lakers were able to make it to the WCF last season and are set to repeat that and even want to go further, that's why GM Rob Pelinka and head coach Darvin Ham bet on continuity for the first time in the LeBron James and Anthony Davis era.

But it seems that despite the NBA media and other team fans believing this time around the Lakers won't be getting closer to the run they had last year, even when last season they thought the team wasn't even gonna make it to the playoffs.

On Tuesday, Shannon Sharpe of “First Take” boldly claimed that the Los Angeles Lakers will make it to the Western Conference Finals for a second season in a row. “I guarantee you…we get at least to the Western Conference Finals,” Sharpe said.

To Sharpe’s credit, the Lakers had a slow start to the 2022-23 regular season as well and went on to reach the Western Conference Finals. Los Angeles started the campaign with a 2-10 record but played great basketball at the tail end of the regular season and carried over its momentum into the first couple of rounds of the playoffs.

The Lakers will have a harder time to make it to the higher seeds

the Lakers’ record indicates that they might miss out on a top-six record in the Western Conference once again. They sit as the No. 9 seed in the conference right now with a 28-26 record and are three games behind the Dallas Mavericks — who are winners of their last five games — for the No. 8 seed.