The official start of the 2023-24 NBA playoffs remains days away, yet playoff discourse has already reached peak form. The play-in matchups and playoff seeds that resulted from the weekend’s Game 82 chaos set up one big question that immediately made headlines at ESPN and elsewhere: Should the eighth-seeded Lakers intentionally lose the West’s 7 vs. 8 play-in game because its winner will face the defending champion Denver Nuggets in the first round? If they did, the Lakers would be forced into... Read this story
